Physician Confidence in Artificial Intelligence: An Online Mobile Survey

Original Paper

• Songhee Oh¹, MD ; 
• Jae Heon Kim², MD ; 
• Sung-Woo Choi³, MD ; 
• Hee Jeong Lee¹, MD ; 
• Jungrak Hong⁴, MD ; 
• Soon Hyo Kwon¹, MD 

¹Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, Soonchunhyang University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea

²Department of Urology, Soonchunhyang University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea

³Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Soonchunhyang University Seoul Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea

⁴Department of Internal Medicine, New York Medical College, New York Health Hospital, New York, NY, United States

ABSTRACT

Background: It is expected that artificial intelligence (AI) will be used extensively in the medical field in the future.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the awareness of AI among Korean doctors and to assess physicians’ attitudes toward the medical application of AI.

Methods: We conducted an online survey composed of 11 closed-ended questions using Google Forms. The survey consisted of questions regarding the recognition of and attitudes toward AI, the development direction of AI in medicine, and the possible risks of using AI in the medical field.

Results: A total of 669 participants completed the survey. Only 40 (5.9%) answered that they had good familiarity with AI. However, most participants considered AI useful in the medical field (558/669, 83.4% agreement). The advantage of using AI was seen as the ability to analyze vast amounts of high-quality, clinically relevant data in real time. Respondents agreed that the area of medicine in which AI would be most useful is disease diagnosis (558/669, 83.4% agreement). One possible problem cited by the participants was that AI would not be able to assist in unexpected situations owing to inadequate information (196/669, 29.3%). Less than half of the participants(294/669, 43.9%) agreed that AI is diagnostically superior to human doctors. Only 237 (35.4%) answered that they agreed that AI could replace them in their jobs.

Conclusions: This study suggests that Korean doctors and medical students have favorable attitudes toward AI in the medical field. The majority of physicians surveyed believed that AI will not replace their roles in the future.

J Med Internet Res 2019;21(3):e12422

doi:10.2196/12422