Artificial intelligence in healthcare: Transformative impacts, peril, and the imperative of ethical stewardship

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping global healthcare, offering unprecedented opportunities to strengthen diagnostics, clinical decision‑making, population health surveillance, and health‑system efficiency. Its promise is particularly significant for low‑ and middle‑income countries, where AI‑enabled tools can help bridge gaps in workforce capacity, disease monitoring, and access to specialized care. Yet these advances carry profound risks. Algorithmic bias, opaque decision pathways, data governance failures, and widening digital inequities threaten to undermine trust and exacerbate existing disparities. Without robust ethical stewardship, AI may amplify structural vulnerabilities rather than alleviate them. This editorial examines AI’s dual trajectory in global health—its transformative potential and emerging hazards—and argues for a coordinated governance framework grounded in transparency, accountability, equity, and human rights. As nations accelerate digital adoption, ethical leadership must become a central pillar of global health strategy to ensure AI serves collective benefit rather than drives unintended harm.