Study: Young people offer important insights on potential of AI in healthcare

Young people are enthusiastic about AI’s potential in healthcare, particularly for improving care quality and outcomes, an NIHR-funded study delivered in North Thames shows.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a valuable tool in healthcare, particularly in the field of radiology. The radiology community, including children’s radiologists, are generally positive about the use of AI and the benefits it can bring to healthcare.

However, until now, there has not been much attention paid to finding out how children and young people feel about AI being used to support their healthcare, for example on their imaging data such as X-rays. To address this gap, Prof Susan Shelmerdine and the ‘FRACTURE Study Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Steering Committee’, of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, co-created a survey which was open for one year and encouraged children and young people from across the UK to respond. The survey was sent out to schools, universities and charity partners.

This study was part of Professor Shelmerdine’s NIHR Advanced Research Fellowship work, and a member of the steering committee, Dr. Lauren Lee, helped to write the article ensuring children and young person’s views were represented in the core message.

Prof Shelmerdine said: The survey results showed that young people were keen for AI to be used in healthcare, particularly if it could improve their care and outcomes. However, they wanted the tools to be supervised by healthcare professionals as they feel there are elements of care such as empathy and ethical decision making, that AI cannot mimic.

When asked specific questions about AI use in radiology, young people felt that AI would be accurate at finding problems on bone X-rays, and expressed a need to prioritise accuracy over speed of results when using AI, whilst still having a trusted healthcare professional in charge of their care.

"The number of specialist trained children’s radiologists in the UK is relatively small, so tools like AI could help upskill our workforce to enable more equitable care for patients who don’t have the option to visit specialist hospitals like GOSH. Nevertheless, we cannot assume that we know what children want.

It was encouraging to see that when asked, children and young people were positive about the use of AI in their healthcare, but it was also important to understand what was important to them – such as human oversight - so that we can factor this into the development of new tools and treatments.”

Read more about this story on the GOSH website.