AI is becoming more and more prevalent in healthcare, as evidenced by the recent launch of new AI capabilities within the Babylon telehealth platform, with CEO Ali Parsa showcasing the results of a recent paper highlighting how the technology outperformed doctors in key clinical examinations.
Whilst such technologies are increasingly capable, a recent study from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) suggests parents still don’t particularly trust it, with millennial parents particularly skeptical.
Generation AI
This is the second annual survey undertaken by IEEE to take the temperature of the 10 largest economies in the world in terms of their attitude towards AI. This year, the research looked specifically at millennials, who are regarded as among the most tech-savvy generation of adults.
Interestingly however, the reticence towards AI in healthcare was strongest in western countries, perhaps because the established healthcare sector is stronger in these nations. The UK, for instance, scored near the bottom in terms of openness and optimism regarding AI, with just 31% of millennial parents happy for their child to wear a wearable device to generate data to help AI understand their health, although this increased ever so slightly as the child aged.
What’s more, just 11% of UK parents completely trusted AI technologies when receiving diagnoses and treatments for their children. Indeed, almost 4 times as many parents in India and China had confidence in the technology than those in the UK. Given the speed with which the Chinese government are likely to ensure AI research has the data required, this increased trust is surely going to see future AI developments in healthcare come from the developing world.
Man and machine
Perhaps the way forward for the healthcare industry in the UK is to ensure that man and machine work together. This was emphasized by the finding that 75% of British respondents would trust a doctor who had augmented their decisions with the help of AI, despite not trusting the AI to work independently. It underlines the importance of keeping humans in the loop.
This was perhaps due to the general lack of confidence in AIs ability to do anything worthwhile. Under half thought it was capable of delivering significant medical breakthroughs, which was roughly half that of respondents in India. The only area that UK parents were confident was in elderly care, with 61% of parents saying they would rather AI took care of their elderly parents than they themselves.
It underlines some of the perception and branding challenges the technology still has to go through before it’s accepted fully by society, but also the varying degrees of success different nations appear to be having.
