Did you know that you can listen to many of your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds?

Like Desert Island Discs, where you can hear castaways like Cher, Gareth Southgate and Nick Cave, and enjoy longer versions of the music they've picked.

Good things come to those who don't wait. Listen to your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Lara Lewington and welcome to Women's Hour on Radio 4. Hello, I'm a technology

journalist, broadcaster and author. And today I bring you a special program looking at AI and

women's health. We've an expert panel to help us understand the potential of AI to transform

women's healthcare. Could it mean better diagnosis? Might it help us look after ourselves better?

And if data is AI's fuel, how prepared are we to hand ours over? Artificial intelligence can

come in many forms, but in simple terms, it's a computer simulation of human intelligence that can perform tasks like learning, reasoning or solving problems.

But, and this is an important but, AI isn't human.

So how do we deal with issues of trust and make sure we use it in the right ways, including freeing doctors

up to better provide empathy and oversight, you know, those human bits. In research for the

government's women's health strategy, 84% of respondents felt that women's voices had not been

listened to by healthcare professionals. So how can women and other underrepresented groups

be heard and diagnosed?

Some are calling for fairer inclusion in data and research,

others for greater emphasis on training doctors in women's health issues,

and how conditions can affect the sexes differently.

Women in the UK may live longer on average than men, but a significantly higher

proportion of our lives is spent in poor health. OnS figures for England show it to be around

25%. That's a quarter of our lives. And we know there are disparities across the country too.

So if something needs to change, the question is, can AI drive that?

...