Intel has conducted a survey in partnership with Convergys Analytics in which 200 U.S. healthcare decision-makers took part. The survey focused on attitudes to artificial intelligence (AI) and perceived barriers to its adoption. While most of the professionals believe AI will be beneficial, a sizable one-third said they wouldn’t trust AI just in case it made a fatal error.
In terms of adoption rates, 19% of those surveyed said that is would take under two years for AI to be widespread in healthcare, 35% said it would take 3-5 years, 32% believe it’ll take 5-10 years, and just 11% think it will take more than ten years. Of the participants, 37% already use AI today, but mostly in a limited capacity.
As part of the survey, Intel wanted to find out which reasons professionals had for being sceptical of AI; the findings show that 54% believe AI will be responsible for a fatal error, 53% said AI will be poorly implemented or won’t work properly, and 49% said AI will be overhyped and not meet expectations.
While many were certainly sceptical about AI, the majority believed AI will improve predictive analytics for intervention (91%) and clinical decision support (91%). Furthermore, 88% of respondents said that AI would enable multiple specialists to interact/improve patient care and 84% stated that those who don’t invest in AI will fall behind, with 83% opining that AI will improve the accuracy of medical diagnoses. Adding to this, 81% said it would improve efficiency and decrease healthcare costs, while 75% were of the opinion that clinicians would spend more time with patients because routine tasks would become automated.
In order to make AI accepted and integrated into healthcare, Intel identified four tasks that need to be achieved. First, the “black box” perception needs to be addressed - people need to understand what the AI is doing. Second, AI needs to be able to perform simple tasks before undertaking complex tasks. Third, the benefits that AI will bring need to be clearly highlighted so that people are more receptive to it. Last but not least, the healthcare sector needs to provide feedback into the regulatory process.
Let us know in the comments whether AI plays a part in your life when it comes to healthcare.
Source: Intel