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# Societal concerns led ethics discussion in medical AI papers on global health in 2025, in 54 publications
- URL: https://aiadoption.org/data/global-health-ai-ethics-topics/
- Published: 2026-10-19T16:35:51.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T06:05:05.000Z
- Description: In medical AI papers on global health, societal concerns such as equity and access featured in 54 publications in 2025, ahead of governance (43) and algorithmic concerns (29), unlike the field as a whole.
- Author: Manu
- Tags: Data, AI in Healthcare, #chart, #ai-index-2026, #hub-healthcare

54

▲ 4.2× vs 2024

medical AI publications on global health discussing societal concerns in 2025; governance 43

20212025

## What the chart shows

Among medical AI publications on global health, societal concerns, such as equity, justice and accessibility, were the most discussed group of ethics topics in 2025, in 54 publications, up from 13 in 2024\. Governance featured in 43 and algorithmic concerns in 29.

That reverses the pattern for medical AI overall, where governance leads ([related chart](https://aiadoption.org/data/medical-ai-ethics-topics/)). The numbers are small: no group had more than 14 publications in any year before 2025.

## Key numbers

| Measure           | Value |
| ----------------- | ----- |
| Societal, 2025    | 54    |
| Governance, 2025  | 43    |
| Algorithmic, 2025 | 29    |
| Societal, 2024    | 13    |
| Governance, 2024  | 12    |
| Algorithmic, 2024 | 14    |

## How to read it

- A publication can discuss more than one group of topics.
- Counts by RAISE Health from PubMed Central, 2021–2025.

**Source:** [RAISE Health](https://aiadoption.org/sources/#raise-health), 2026, via the AI Index Report 2026 (Stanford HAI), figure 6.4.6: *Number of medical AI and global health publications by ethics topics, 2021–25*. Chart and text by AI Adoption.  
Numbers checked against the published data on 20 October 2026.  
[Download the data (CSV)](https://charts.aiadoption.org/ai-index/csv/global-health-ai-ethics-topics.csv?ref=aiadoption.org) · [Cite this chart](#source)