The research headline of the week belongs to a study out of Johns Hopkins University that found “doctors who use AI are viewed negatively by their peers.”
Clickbait from afar, but far from clickbait. The investigation in npj Digital Medicine surfaced interesting takeaways after randomizing 276 practicing clinicians to evaluate one of three vignettes depicting a physician: using no GenAI (the control), using GenAI as a primary decision-making tool, or using GenAI as a verification tool.
- Participants rated the clinical skill of the physician using GenAI as a primary decision-making tool as significantly lower than the physician who didn’t use it (3.79 vs. 5.93 control on a 7-point scale).
- Framing GenAI as a “second opinion” or verification tool improved the negative perception of clinical skill, but didn’t fully eliminate it (4.99 vs. 5.93 control).
- Ironically, while an overreliance on GenAI was viewed as a weakness, the clinicians also recognized AI as beneficial for enhancing medical decision-making. Riddle us that.
Patients seem to agree. A separate study in JAMA Network Open took a look at the patient perspective by randomizing 1.3k adults into four groups that were shown fake ads for family doctors, with one key difference: no mention of AI use (the control), or a reference to the doctors using AI for administrative, diagnostic, or therapeutic purposes (Supplement 1 has all the ads).
For every AI use case, the doctors were perceived significantly worse on a 5-point scale:
- less competent – control: 3.85, admin AI: 3.71; diagnostic AI: 3.66; therapeutic AI: 3.58
- less trustworthy – control: 3.88; admin AI: 3.66; diagnostic AI: 3.62; therapeutic AI: 3.61
- less empathic – control: 4.00 ; admin AI: 3.80; diagnostic AI: 3.82; therapeutic AI: 3.72
Where’s that leave us? Despite pressure on clinicians to be early AI adopters, using it clearly comes with skepticism from both peers and patients. In other words, AI adoption is getting throttled by not only technological barriers, but also some less-discussed social barriers.
The Takeaway
Medical AI moves at the speed of trust, and these studies highlight the social stigmas that still need to be overcome for patient care to improve as fast as the underlying tech.
