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).
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, 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) · Cite this chart
Numbers checked against the published data on 20 October 2026.
Download the data (CSV) · Cite this chart
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