AI in health care: what do the public and NHS staff think? (The Health Foundation, 31 July 2024)

Summary

The Health Foundation surveyed the UK public and NHS staff about their attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare.

Content

Key points:

• Interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care is growing rapidly, but if it is to be accepted, and its benefits fully realised, it must command the confidence of patients, the public and NHS staff. To help understand public and staff attitudes towards the use of AI in health care, the Health Foundation commissioned a survey, conducted in June and July 2024, of 7,201 nationally representative members of the public (aged 16 years and older) and 1,292 NHS staff members.
• There is, on balance, support from both the public and NHS staff for the use of AI in health care, indicating a broadly receptive environment. Over half of the UK public (54%) and three-quarters of NHS staff surveyed (76%) said they support the use of AI for patient care, and an even greater proportion said they support the use of AI for administrative purposes (61% of the public and 81% of NHS staff surveyed).
• Despite this, a significant minority of the public is currently not supportive. For example, around 1 in 6 members of the public and around 1 in 10 of the NHS staff we surveyed think that AI will make care quality worse. Among the public, young people (aged 16–24 years) are less likely to believe that AI will improve care quality compared to other age groups, and women are less likely to believe that AI will improve care quality compared to men. This highlights the need to engage closely with the public and staff in order to understand and address concerns.
• One area of concern is AI’s potential impact on the social and relational aspects of health care. Over half of the public (53%) think AI will make them feel more distant from health care staff, while nearly two-thirds of the NHS staff surveyed (65%) think AI will make them feel more distant from patients. These results suggest that AI technologies will need to be designed and used in ways that protect or even enhance the human dimension of care. 
• The public are also concerned about the potential impact of AI on decision-making accuracy. For example, nearly a third (30%) of the public think that the main disadvantage of AI will be that health care staff will not question the outputs of AI systems, and so may miss errors. The public are also much more likely to support the involvement of AI in decision making where AI outputs are checked by a human. These results suggest the public strongly value keeping a human in the loop for many uses of AI in health care.
• While the NHS staff we surveyed are, on balance, looking forward to using AI as part of their roles (57% agreeing compared with 17% disagreeing), this is not equally felt across all occupational groups. For example, medical and dental staff are more positive than clinical staff such as health care assistants and health care support workers. In helping health care workers adjust to the rise of AI, policy makers and NHS leaders need to consider how its impact will vary across different roles and tailor engagement and support accordingly.