Artificial intelligence in medicine: Overcoming or recapitulating structural challenges to improving patient care?

Abstract

There is considerable enthusiasm about the prospect that artificial intelligence (AI) will help to improve the safety and efficacy of health services and the efficiency of health systems. To realize this potential, however, AI systems will have to overcome structural problems in the culture and practice of medicine and the organization of health systems that impact the data from which AI models are built, the environments into which they will be deployed, and the practices and incentives that structure their development. This perspective elaborates on some of these structural challenges and provides recommendations to address potential shortcomings.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; bias; bioethics; equity; healthcare; learning health systems; research ethics; social determinants of health; social value; structural injustice.