STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (13:33): There is a clear and increasingly urgent need for Australian governments to set the conditions for safe and effective adoption of AI services in health care. AI is already reading our scans and biopsies, drafting clinical notes and triaging patients. But our response so far has been siloed and fragmented.

There is no single oversight body across health care. The new office of AI will need dedicated senior health leadership. We need a national AI health strategy covering tiered safety and evidence standards across the AI lifecycle; clear liability and an independent body empowered to audit or halt deployed systems; mandatory equity testing across rural, First Nations, non-English-speaking and older populations; national data sharing and benchmark data sets; and clinician training in model uncertainty, not in generic AI literacy.

We need investment in sovereign AI capability and genuine protections of transparency and consent for all patients of all ages in our healthcare system. AI is already opening doors to a more efficient and more adaptive healthcare system, but it also has the potential to be a very major disruptor of that system. We have to move with innovation and agility to get ahead of this historic challenge.