Introduction

Special Issue on ʻAI and Robotics in Healthcare: A Challenge for Law and Technology’

The papers in this special issue derive largely from a conference held at Nova Law School, Lisbon in April 2023. The theme of the conference was dedicated to studying the regulatory challenges posed by the increasing deployment of AI systems in healthcare settings, and assessing the degree to which new EU legislation is able sensibly to address these challenges. The conference was held as a joint collaboration between the WhatNext.Law research center at Nova Law School and the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law, University of Oslo. WhatNext.Law provided sponsorship, as did the Research Council of Norway.

The papers published herein have been updated to reflect the considerable legislative developments that have occurred since the conference was held, with the recent adoption of the AI Act as arguably the most significant of these developments. All up, the papers show that legal responses to AI deployment in healthcare settings are still far from mature, despite the ambitious regulatory drive of Brussels. While there are now a large number of relevant legislative acts, court decisions and soft law codes, their application and interaction remain plagued by uncertainty, inconsistency and confusion.

We hope that this special issue will contribute to the further development of a sensible regulatory framework for deployment of AI and robotics in the healthcare sector.

Vera Lúcia Raposo, Lee A. Bygrave

Lisbon, Oslo