| | | Two in five practicing physicians are equal parts enthused over and worried about AI in healthcare. That’s the same ratio the American Medical Association turned up the previous time it conducted its Physician Sentiment Survey. However, the segment of responding doctors whose excitement exceeded their trepidation grew from 30% in 2023 to 35% in 2024. And the portion of those more worried than eager dropped from 29% to 25%. The AMA’s latest effort rustled up full responses from almost 1,200 physicians some time in 2024. Along with the key survey findings, the survey report—released this week—offers four key observations. Straight from the report, these are: 1. Physician sentiment toward AI is trending positively, with growing recognition of its benefits and increased enthusiasm.A growing majority of physicians recognize AI’s benefits, with 68% in 2024 reporting at least some advantage in patient care (up from 63% in 2023). In 2024, 36% of physicians reported feeling more excited than concerned about AI (up from 30% in 2023).
2. There has been substantial growth in physician use of AI in practice.AI use cases nearly doubled (66% in 2024 vs. 38% in 2023). The dramatic drop in non-users (62% to 33%) in just one year is impressive and unusually fast for healthcare technology adoption. Significantly more physicians are currently using AI for visit documentation, discharge summaries and care plans, and medical research and standard of care summaries than in 2023.
3. Addressing administrative burden remains a key area of opportunity for AI.Most physicians (57%) view addressing administrative burden through automation as the biggest area of opportunity for AI. Near-term adoption is focused on use cases to help with documentation.
4. Physicians still have key needs to build trust and advance adoption of AI.Physicians emphasize the need for a feedback loop, data privacy assurances, seamless workflow integration, and adequate training and education as critical factors for AI adoption. Nearly half of physicians (47%) ranked increased oversight as the number one regulatory action needed to increase trust in adopting AI tools.
The survey also showed: - A majority (68%) of physicians surveyed in 2024 indicated they see definite or some advantage to using AI tools, up slightly from 65% in 2023.
- About three in five (66%) physicians surveyed in 2024 indicated they currently use AI in their practice, up significantly from 38% in 2023.
- The top area of opportunity for AI according to 57% of physicians surveyed in 2024 was “addressing administrative burden through automation,” up slightly from 56% in 2023.
- According to physicians surveyed in 2024, the top attributes required to advance physician adoption of AI tools were a designated feedback channel (88%), data privacy assurances (87%), and EHR integration (84%).
In 2023, AMA notes, the top factors influencing adoption were data privacy assurances (87%), not being held liable for AI model errors (87%), and medical liability coverage (86%). The 2024 survey “illustrates that physicians are increasingly intrigued by the assistive role of health AI and the potential of AI-enabled tools to reduce administrative burdens, enhance diagnostic accuracy and personalize treatments,” AMA immediate past president Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, comments in a news release. However, he adds: ‘[T]here remain unresolved physician concerns with the design of health AI and the potential of flawed AI-enabled tools to put privacy at risk, integrate poorly with EHR systems, offer incorrect conclusions or recommendations and introduce new liability concerns. Increased oversight [is] the top regulatory action needed to increase physician confidence and adoption of AI.’
Read the full report. |
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| | | | Buzzworthy developments of the past few days. - A federal judge has vacated five of seven complaints against UnitedHealth Group—yet is allowing the AI-implicated suit to advance. This is the class action in which a handful of Medicare Advantage enrollees accuse the insurer of using AI to reflexively deny claims. The lawsuit, filed with a federal court in Minnesota, gives several examples of the harm allegedly done by the AI-aided claims denials. One describes a series of refusals to pay for a 74-year-old’s stroke care. The patient ended up on the hook for more than $70,000 only to die in an assisted-living facility, according to representatives of the decedent’s estate. The suit charges UnitedHealth with “bank[ing] on patients’ impaired conditions, lack of knowledge and lack of resources to appeal erroneous AI-powered decisions.” In a written ruling, Judge John Tunheim gives his rationale for dismissing the five counts and hands down his call. “The only claims that survive … are the claims for breach of contract and for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing because the Court will only need to evaluate compliance with the insurance agreements,” Tunheim writes. “Accordingly, the Court will grant in part and deny in part UHC’s motion to dismiss, allowing Plaintiffs’ breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claims to proceed.” Courthouse News Service has more.
- Provider orgs ought to take a human-centric approach to clinical AI adoption. That’s humans as in healthcare workers. Or at least those who’ll use the technology. Healthcare AI developers, for their part, should create products that “ultimately serve the needs of their end users, improve their daily lives and do not negatively disrupt existing systems or ways of working.” The advice is from four professional people familiar with the field. Their guidance, posted Feb. 13 in Mondaq, calls for creating a set of “user personas” to account for the job-specific ways in which healthcare workers work. “An understanding of technology usage patterns, workflow bottlenecks and real-life stories from end-users,” the authors explain, “helps craft the persona’s behaviors, skills, needs and preferences for using technology solutions.”
- CVS Health is rolling out a new app to more fully digitize consumers’ interactions with the company. The tool features AI-powered search and chat functions. In a Feb. 12 earnings call, chief strategy officer Larry McGrath named digitization as one of four strategic that will guide CVS from here on out. “We’re leveraging AI to create a more intuitive workflow and faster turnaround times to reduce frustrations for our members and provider partners,” McGrath said. “The broader demographic trends of an aging population, advances in AI and technology, the need for more personalized care and the expectations of the American public to create an improved consumer experience are opportunities where we are best positioned to lead.” CVS’s announcement of the new app is here, and the Motley Fool has the full transcript of this week’s earnings call.
- Picture a nurse or physician assistant getting coached in real time by an AI agent inside a mobile clinic. Coached to do what, you ask? Oh, just patient-care things normally reserved for doctors. Now picture the action taking place in a rural area where human physicians are few and far between. The scenario makes more sense now, doesn’t it? It’s the brainchild of HHS’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H. The agency is funding a couple of multimillion-dollar research projects to bring the idea to fruition. At one of the sites chosen to do the hands-on work, the University of Michigan, a professor of robotics and computer science explains the plan. “We want to bring the hospital to the house or to the church parking lot,” says Jason Corso, PhD, or anyplace, really, “where the nearest medical center that performs the care the patient needs might be two hours away.” ARPA-H program overview here.
- The average hospital produces 50 petabytes of data each year. The typical medical record exceeds half the word count of Hamlet. Most clinical notes are bursting with redundant information. Gastroenterologist and writer Spencer Dorn, MD, MPH, MHA, reminds us of these realities to illustrate the growing utility of clinical summaries generated quickly and quite smartly by AI. Such documentations “increasingly converge with other AI tools, most obviously AI scribes, which effectively turn conversations into notes,” Dorn points out in Forbes. “However, only one-third of clinical note text derives from conversations. Summarization tools can capture the remaining two-thirds of note text deriving from other parts of the medical record.” He has quite a bit more to say about this topic. Hear him out here.
- In Scotland, some healthcare thought leaders feel the need to reassure the public that healthcare AI is nothing to fear. One is Katriona Brooksbank, PhD, of the University of Glasgow. “AI cannot operate in isolation,” she writes in a short opinion piece published by The Herald. “Clinicians must review AI-generated results before diagnosis or treatment decisions are made, ensuring patient care remains safe and effective.” AI will not replace human clinicians, she adds, and “should instead be looked upon as a powerful, well-tested tool.”
- Back in the States, they’re talking about the evolution of medical decision-making into ‘an iterative dialogue’ between physicians and AI. “Where doctors once relied solely on clinical expertise and static resources, they now engage in a dynamic exchange with LLMs” (large-language AI models). It’s a dynamic that “challenges assumptions and expands thinking,” innovation theorist John Nosta observes in Psychology Today. “With medical knowledge increasing exponentially, this iterative approach helps physicians process vast amounts of information while maintaining clinical judgment.” Nosta is watching for medicine to take AI well beyond its present role as a clinical efficiency booster. Human-AI combos, he suggests, may produce nothing less than elevated human reasoning.
- Then too, AI will never be a cure-all for what ails U.S. healthcare. “If we are unwilling to change the problems within the health system, AI is not going to solve all those problems for us,” says Adam Sharp, MD, chief executive of Galvan, a Utah-based blockchain company focused on promoting health and wellness. How about on the level of the individual patient? “If people just think it’s going to magically improve your life,” Sharp tells a TV news operation in Salt Lake City, “I’m not sure it’s coming anytime soon.”
- Recent research in the news:
- Notable FDA approval activity:
- Funding news of note:
- From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
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