From digital smart assistants to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence (AI) has permeated many aspects of our lives. In the world of public health and medicine, AI holds great potential to revolutionise the way healthcare is delivered - from predicting a person's health risk, supporting a personalised care plan to enabling the drug development process.

Yet, if left unchecked, AI could amplify and perpetuate existing bias in society which in turn could undermine the quality of healthcare for underrepresented groups like older people, women and people of colour. 

In early February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a policy paper "Ageism in artificial intelligence for health" focusing on the dangers of ageism in AI while offering eight strategies to cover these age-related biases in AI tools for health. In sum, the paper recommended that AI developers and practitioners include seniors in the data collection, design, development, use and evaluation process. Furthermore, it advocated for an ethics and governance framework that will guide the research and implementation of AI technologies among older people, so as to protect them. 

It is in the hope that these considerations will remove the encoding of any stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination against seniors, thereby creating systems that will truly reap the benefits of AI in healthcare for older people.