IRHAI Policy Document 002: Accountability is Non negotiable

IRHAI-POL-002: Accountability & Clinical Ownership
Constitutional Policy Class

Accountability & Clinical Ownership

Governance Layer: Structural + Runtime

Refined for Runtime Enforceability & Global Alignment

2. Core Non-Negotiable Principle

"Responsibility is non-transferable."

Clinical responsibility for patient-impacting decisions must remain anchored to a named human clinician or accountable healthcare institution — at runtime.

3. Policy Scope

This policy applies to any AI system that, at runtime, performs one or more of the following:

📊

Prioritization

Influencing clinical prioritization or triage order.

🧠

Diagnostic

Shaping diagnostic interpretation or findings.

💊

Treatment

Recommending pathways or altering workflow ordering.

👻

Invisible AI

Triggering alerts, suppression, or background scaling.

4. Governance Framework Alignment

IRHAI-POL-002 operationalizes the Responsibility (R) and Accountability (A) pillars of the RATSe v3 architecture. The following table maps these pillars to specific runtime requirements.

RATSe Pillar Runtime Requirement (POL-002)
Responsibility 4.1 Named Ownership at Inference Time
Accountability 4.2 Prohibition of Responsibility Diffusion
Safety 4.3 Override Is a Right, Not a Feature
Transparency 4.4 Invisible AI = Explicit Accountability
Ethics & Equity 5.0 Prevention of Structural Negligence

Operational Requirements Details

RATSe Emphasis View

Policy Emphasis Visualization

Conceptual Emphasis: ...

5. Runtime Failure Conditions

Governance fails if responsibility cannot be identified at the moment of inference. These triggers require immediate transition to a Safe Fallback state.

⚠️

Untraceable Action

Patient-impacting action cannot be traced to a named human.

🚫

Hidden Override

Clinician held responsible for a decision they could not override.

👻

Paper Only

Accountability exists only in documentation, not in runtime logs.

🛑

SAFE FALLBACK

Mandatory revert to manual standard of care.

7. Explicit Non-Claims

IRHAI does not assign legal liability.
IRHAI does not act as a regulator.
IRHAI does not certify systems or institutions.

9. Global Alignment

EU AI Act (Art. 14) FDA TPLC South Korea AI Act India DPDP Act Joint Commission

This policy defines governance reality, not legal theory. It provides a healthcare-specific governance translation layer that makes accountability explicit and inspectable at runtime.

8. Closing Doctrine

"Healthcare AI does not fail because models are inaccurate. It fails when authority is automated, responsibility is diffused, and runtime ownership disappears. IRHAI-POL-002 exists to make that failure structurally impossible."

"This page is an interpretive visualization of IRHAI-POL-002. It does not prescribe implementation architecture or certify compliance."

Institute for Responsible Healthcare AI

Policy Class: Constitutional | Governance Layer: Structural + Runtime

IRHAI-POL-002 | v3.2 | Mandatory (Non-binding reference standard)

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