FUTURE-AI is an international consensus guideline for trustworthy AI in healthcare, agreed by 117 experts from 50 countries over 24 months Lekadir et al. (2025). It groups 30 recommendations under six principles, whose initials spell FUTURE, plus seven general recommendations. This section gives one page per principle, so you can work on a single principle across the whole lifecycle.
| Principle | What it asks for |
|---|---|
| Fairness | The tool performs as well for one group of patients as for another |
| Universality | The tool works outside the place where it was built: new patients, users and sites |
| Traceability | You can follow and account for the tool’s history, from development to daily use |
| Usability | Clinicians and patients can use the tool safely and efficiently, and it helps them |
| Robustness | Performance holds when the input data vary in expected and unexpected ways |
| Explainability | The tool gives clinically meaningful information about how it reached its output |
The general recommendations cover stakeholders, privacy, risks, evaluation, regulation, ethics and societal impact.
For all 30 recommendations in one table, with compliance levels and the chapter that covers each one, see the FUTURE-AI overview. If you prefer to work phase by phase, the Design, Development, Evaluation and Deployment chapters each open with a FUTURE-AI box naming the recommendations they support.
- Lekadir, K., Frangi, A. F., Porras, A. R., & others. (2025). FUTURE-AI: international consensus guideline for trustworthy and deployable artificial intelligence in healthcare. BMJ, 388, e081554. 10.1136/bmj-2024-081554