The ELSA AI lab Northern Netherlands (ELSA-NN) is committed to the promotion of healthy living, working and ageing. By investigating cultural, ethical, legal, socio-political, and psychological aspects of the use of AI in different decision-making contexts and integrating this knowledge into an online ELSA tool, ELSA-NN aims to contribute to knowledge about trustworthy human-centric AI and development and implementation of health technology innovations, including AI, in the Northern region.
The research in ELSA-NN will focus on developing and mapping ELSA knowledge around three general concepts of importance for the development, monitoring and implementation of trustworthy and human-centric AI: availability, use, and performance. These concepts will be explored in two lines of research: 1) use case research investigating the use of different AI applications with different types of data in different decision-making contexts at different time periods during the life course, and 2) an exploration among stakeholders in the Northern region of needs, knowledge, (digital) health literacy, attitudes and values concerning the use of AI in decision-making for healthy living, working and ageing. Specific focus will be on investigating low social economic status (SES) perspectives, since health disparities between high and low SES groups are growing world-wide, including in the Northern region and existing health inequalities may increase with the introduction and use of innovative health technologies such as AI.
ELSA-NN will be integrated within the AI hub Northern-Netherlands, the Health Technology Research & Innovation Cluster (HTRIC) and the Data Science Center in Health (DASH). They offer a solid base and infrastructure for the ELSA-NN consortium, which will be extended with additional partners, especially patient/citizens, private, governmental and research representatives, to have a quadruple-helix consortium. ELSA-NN will be set-up as a learning health system in which much attention will be paid to dialogue, communication and education.
