Prerequisite: None

Exam Type: No Exam

Would you trust an AI to diagnose your illness, prescribe your medication, and explain your treatment—with no physician involved? Welcome to Artificial Intelligence, Law and the Future of Healthcare.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape nearly every aspect of healthcare. AI systems now assist clinicians in diagnosing disease, selecting treatments, interpreting medical images, documenting patient encounters, allocating healthcare resources, conducting biomedical research, and increasingly interacting directly with patients. While these technologies promise to improve efficiency, accuracy, and access to care, they also raise fundamental questions about how healthcare should be governed.

Can an algorithm become a healthcare professional? Who should be responsible when AI contributes to patient harm? What should patients be told when AI influences their care? Should hospitals be allowed to build their own AI systems? And as AI moves beyond decision support toward increasingly autonomous agents, are our existing legal and ethical frameworks still fit for purpose?

This reading group explores these questions through the lens of health law, bioethics, and public policy. We will examine how it challenges many of the concepts on which modern healthcare regulation has long depended—including professional competence, informed consent, medical malpractice, product regulation, institutional responsibility, and public health governance. Drawing on scholarship from law, medicine, computer science, ethics, and social sciences, the course combines legal analysis with practical policy discussions.

Whether you are interested in health law, technology regulation, artificial intelligence, bioethics, public policy, or the future of medicine, this reading group aims to provide both a conceptual framework and practical tools for thinking critically about one of the most significant transformations in contemporary healthcare.

Note: This reading group will meet on the following dates: TBD.