The potential for artificial intelligence to transform healthcare: perspectives from international health leaders

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform care delivery by improving health outcomes, patient safety, and the affordability and accessibility of high-quality care. AI will be critical to building an infrastructure capable of caring for an increasingly aging population, utilizing an ever-increasing knowledge of disease and options for precision treatments, and combatting workforce shortages and burnout of medical professionals. However, we are not currently on track to create this future. This is in part because the health data needed to train, test, use, and surveil these tools are generally neither standardized nor accessible. There is also universal concern about the ability to monitor health AI tools for changes in performance as they are implemented in new places, used with diverse populations, and over time as health data may change. The Future of Health (FOH), an international community of senior health care leaders, collaborated with the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy to conduct a literature review, expert convening, and consensus-building exercise around this topic. This commentary summarizes the four priority action areas and recommendations for health care organizations and policymakers across the globe that FOH members identified as important for fully realizing AI’s potential in health care: improving data quality to power AI, building infrastructure to encourage efficient and trustworthy development and evaluations, sharing data for better AI, and providing incentives to accelerate the progress and impact of AI.

Use of Artificial Intelligence tools in supporting decision-making in hospital management

“…In the context of implementing AI tools in hospital management, this study made evident the high expectations of managers regarding the relative advantage of AI, somewhat aligned with perceptions revealed in the literature [29,[32][33][34] . Thus, although significant optimism about the potential benefits of AI is evidenced, substantial skepticism about its evidence base persists [35,36] .…”

“…Through this analysis, we aim to provide a deeper understanding of current dynamics and help shape future strategies for the adoption of emerging technologies in the health management sector [34] . The implementation of AI facilitates data-driven decision-making, offering significant potential to improve management processes in healthcare facilities, which indirectly impacts the quality of the services provided, reducing disparities [51,52] .…”