Health Education England: Understanding healthcare workers’ confidence in AI (Part 1, May 2022)

Summary

This report explores the factors influencing healthcare workers’ confidence in AI-driven technologies. A second report will detail how their confidence can be developed through education and training.

Content

This research, which comprises two reports, is a collaboration between the NHS AI Lab and Health Education England. Its primary aim is to explore the factors influencing healthcare workers’ confidence in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and how these can inform the development of related education and training.

The research follows the Topol Review (2019) recommendation to develop a healthcare workforce able and willing to use AI and robotics, and is part of Health Education England’s Digital, AI and Robotics Technologies in Education (DART-Ed) programme to understand the impact of advances of these technologies on education and training requirements. Supporting healthcare workers to feel confident in identifying when and how to use AI is a main objective of the NHS AI Lab, and a key component of its vision for the safe, effective, and ethical adoption of AI technologies across health and care.

This first report outlines a conceptual framework for understanding what influences confidence in AI among healthcare workers.

The second report will determine educational and training needs based on the findings and conceptual framework of this report, and present pathways to develop related education and training offerings.