Patients willing to use AI and wearables, but concerns linger

While many clinicians, researchers and decision makers are looking to wearables and AI to provide the “magic bullet” to transform healthcare, the report noted, the perspective of patients has often been neglected or forgotten.
Jeff Rowe
Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - 00:00

Despite the spread of AI and wearable devices across the healthcare sector, an estimated 20 percent of patients with chronic conditions are still completely opposed to the use of these technologies in their treatment plans.

That’s  according to a study published this month in npj Digital Medicine, in which scientists from Paris Descartes University surveyed more than 1,000 patients about the use of AI-powered and wearable digital health solutions.

Among the study’s key findings:

  • Just 3 percent of participants said negative aspects such as cybersecurity risks and data privacy issues outweigh the potential benefits of tech-enabled care, while 20 percent said the benefits "greatly outweighed" the dangers.
  • At the same time, approximately 20 percent said they would refuse all four of the high-tech care options presented: AI-powered skin cancer screening, remote monitoring of chronic conditions to predict exacerbations, "smart" clothes for physical therapy and AI chatbots to answer emergency calls.
  • A total of 35 percent of those surveyed said they would refuse at least one of the presented AI-enabled or wearable treatment options.
  • Overall, only 50 percent of patients said the development of AI and other digital tools in healthcare represented an "important opportunity"; 11 percent considered this innovation dangerous.

In particular, the report noted, patients feared that the misuse of technology would lead to unwanted replacement of humans and threaten the humanistic aspect of health and care.

"Our results highlight that patients intuitively think that AI should help clinicians 'predict' outcomes, but that decisions, actions and recommendations should remain a human task,” the study's authors wrote. “Technology would be like a 'driver assistance' for clinicians. Even among patients who were the most ready for the use of technology in their care, they would only see AI as a complement — and not as replacement — for human care for situations related to sensitive topics (cancer) or which involved lasting interventions (monitoring for chronic conditions).”

 

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