Navigating the Intersections of AI and Data Protection: A Comparative Analysis of the EU and US Approach to Healthcare

The 21st century has been characterized by major technological innovations that reshaped our daily lives, habits, and the way we interact. The improvements in computational power and the availability of big data made possible the development of artificial intelligence (AI), which, in recent years, has been incorporated into an increasingly higher number of devices and systems in a wide range of fields. The potential of AI largely relies on the availability of data, which are extracted from individuals’ interaction with digital devices, online platforms, and multiple sources that collect our data and utilize them to train algorithms and extract valuable information. However, the dependence on physical persons’ data poses ethical, privacy, and safety concerns that governments worldwide are called to address. With this study, we explore the current main applications of AI and its future potential developments, as well as the concerns emerging from its reliance on data. By doing so, we will explore how the European Union addresses these modern issues through law regulation, and compare it to the United States’ approach to these topics. The focus will then shift to the healthcare domain, exploring the EU and US current state and the challenges resulting from their approach to the handling of health data. This study outlines how crucial it is to ensure subjects’ privacy and data protection, but also how stringent regulations could potentially lead to stagnant landscapes in terms of technological innovation, highlighting the importance of finding a balance between privacy and progress.