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AI in Healthcare: an ethical perspective

This module aims to enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of ethical problems raised by the use of AI in healthcare. It offers students an enhanced set of ethical skills and capacities that will facilitate their everyday practice and professionalism.

This module will provide students from various backgrounds (healthcare data science, law, social sciences and humanities) with the opportunity to explore and understand the trajectory of AI applications for healthcare, and to provide them with a set of skills that will enable them to make ethically sound decisions in their everyday practice, with an awareness of practical limitations in implementation.

Module delivery

Part time delivery, with the module delivered in one semester. The module runs in semester two.

This module will be taught in a flexible manner to accommodate the professional needs of our prospective students and particularly the professional commitments of healthcare clinicians. With this in mind, we designed three 3 blocks of teaching in person (equal spaced along the semester), complemented by weekly online discussion boards moderated by staff, where students will have the opportunity to reflect on their knowledge, engage with pears and teachers and get familiar with AI in HC newest developments.

Each block of teaching is a full day (5 hours), mandatory face-to-face teaching, when the students will attend the lectures and workshops and engage with ethicists and health professionals to share their experiences and ethical dilemmas. In each block there is a 3-hour lecture and further 2 hours are dedicated to exploratory workshops to consolidate the lectures. Examples of exploratory workshops:

  1. 'What are your ethical problems raised by the use of AI in HC?'
  2. 'Exploring the existing ethical framework for the NHS’.
  3. 'Critical analysis of new ethical issues in healthcare.'

* The content of the lecture and workshops is flexible, meaning that the pace of development might need introducing new topics in the curriculum each year.

In person teaching is planned with mandatory attendance. Recording of these sessions will be available online.

Key dates and application information

  • Apply by: 15.12.2025
  • Module start date: 26.01.2026
  • Module end date: 31.05.2026

Who is the module for?

Everyone with an interest in the ethics of using AI in healthcare, including healthcare professionals, but also people interacting with this topic in other capacities (e.g. software developers, PPI representatives, HC managers).

This module will provide students from various backgrounds (healthcare data science, law, social sciences and humanities) with the opportunity to explore and understand the trajectory of AI applications for healthcare, and to provide them with a set of skills that will enable them to make ethically sound decisions in their everyday practice, with an awareness of practical limitations in implementation.

The module is a standalone option and can be used to support continuous professional development.

Module details and indicative content

The curriculum contains the following topics (to be adjusted when new issues might arise):

  1. AI developments in Healthcare
  2. ‘Wearable AI’: AI ethics in assessing health data from Wearable Devices
  3. ‘Dirty data’: AI bias, discrimination and harm
  4. Datafication of Health
  5. AI transparency: how transparent and reproducible are AI results?
  6. ‘Robot Doctors’? AI supervision and control
  7. Clinical safety
  8. Cybersecurity
  9. Global ethics of AI in Healthcare
  10. Algorithmic impact assessment in healthcare
  11. The Internet of health
  12. Digital Phenotyping

How you are assessed

The assessments for this module consist of two summative components:

  • A presentation (50%) of an AI in HC ethics issue including a plan of how they would implement the NHS AI and Digital Healthcare Technologies Capability Framework (15 min.).
  • Annotated bibliography (50%): Students will have to critically analyse 5-10 articles around a particular topic of AI in HC of their choice (2000 words).