> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://aiadoption.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Medical AI papers discussing ethics more than doubled to 2,378 in 2025, 43.4% of all medical AI papers
- URL: https://aiadoption.org/data/medical-ai-ethics-publications/
- Published: 2026-10-19T16:36:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T06:05:09.000Z
- Description: In 2025, 2,378 medical AI publications discussed ethics, 2.1 times 2024 and 43.4% of all 5,477 medical AI papers, up from 37.1%.
- Author: Manu
- Tags: Data, AI in Healthcare, #chart, #ai-index-2026, #hub-healthcare

2,378

▲ 2.1× vs 2024

medical AI publications that discussed ethics in 2025, 43.4% of all 5,477

20212025

## What the chart shows

In PubMed Central, 2,378 medical AI publications discussed ethics in 2025, 2.1 times the 1,114 of 2024\. That is 43.4% of the 5,477 medical AI publications that year, up from 37.1% in 2024 and 22.5% in 2021.

Medical AI publishing as a whole grew 83% in 2025, so ethics discussion grew faster than the field. The AI Index finds the conversation narrow and dominated by governance ([related chart](https://aiadoption.org/data/medical-ai-ethics-topics/)).

## Key numbers

| Measure                       | Value |
| ----------------------------- | ----- |
| Discussing ethics, 2025       | 2,378 |
| Discussing ethics, 2024       | 1,114 |
| All medical AI, 2025          | 5,477 |
| All medical AI, 2024          | 3,000 |
| Share discussing ethics, 2025 | 43.4% |
| Share discussing ethics, 2021 | 22.5% |

## How to read it

- Bibliometric analysis of PubMed Central, January 2021 to December 2025, by RAISE Health; ethics publications are those matching ethics search terms.
- Publications discussing ethics are a subset of all medical AI publications; the shares are our calculation from the two series.

**Source:** [RAISE Health](https://aiadoption.org/sources/#raise-health), 2026, via the AI Index Report 2026 (Stanford HAI), figure 6.4.1: *Number of medical AI and ethics publications, 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/medical-ai-ethics-publications.csv?ref=aiadoption.org) · [Cite this chart](#source)