The Geographic Bias in Medical AI Tools

Patient data from just three states trains most AI diagnostic tools.

Just a few decades ago, scientists didn’t think much about diversity when studying new medications. Most clinical trials enrolled mainly white men living near urban research institutes, with the assumption that any findings would apply equally to the rest of the country. Later research demonstrated that assumption to be false; examples accumulated of medications that were later determined to be less effective or caused more side effects in populations that were underrepresented in the initial study.