Health economies and artificial intelligence: Opportunities and limitations for optimizing health spending in Morocco

Higher Institute of Nursing and Health Techniques, Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Kenitra, Morocco

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract

The Moroccan health system is confronted with growing economic difficulty, characterized by a sustained rise in health expenditure within an environment of epidemiological transition and a search for efficiency to reach universal health coverage. The onset of IA represents transformative opportunity to address the challenge. This study aims to analyze critically the potential and limits of IA in order to optimize the healthcare spending in Morocco. In this sense, a narrative analysis was carried out by relying on synthetic revue of international scientific literature and institutional reports, neatly contextualized to socio economical and structural realities of kingdom. The results identify significant opportunities according to several levels: clinically, the early diagnostic and personalized medicine, at managerial level, via logistic optimization and fraud detection; and at public health level by the enhancement of health monitoring and pharmaco-economy. However, the deployment of IA collides with substantial limits by including defects of structured and interoperable health-based data. The paucity of specialized skills, the absence of regulatory framework and notable ethical risks such as: algorithmic bias. Lastly but by no means at least, if IA has the considerable potential to rationalize the health expenditures, its valorization in Morocco is conditioned by leveraging an integrated national strategy, building a framework of sound governance and strategic investment in the human capital and digital infrastructure. The progressive and ethical approach is crucial to guarantee the IA becomes a lever of fairness and efficiency and not a source of increased inequality.