Almost two thirds of the healthcare professionals in the Netherlands expect the rise of AI in healthcare to affect their daily work within five years. For a period of ten years, this expectation is shared by as many as 95% of professionals. This is the result of a survey carried out by MedicX.AI in cooperation with the UMCG and the Technical Medical Centre of the University of Twente. At the same time, half of the respondents indicate that their organisation lacks a clear vision on AI.
Changes
The initiators investigated the views of Dutch healthcare professionals on the adoption and implementation of AI in healthcare. Clinicians, researchers, data scientists and others participated in the study. The majority of the respondents (85%) are prepared to work with AI themselves. The respondents see the best opportunities for AI in healthcare in the field of diagnostics, followed by more personalised treatments.
Barriers
In spite of these expected changes and possible applications, 90% of the respondents see barriers to this development. Lack of expertise is the most important barrier, but the limitations of IT infrastructure and data accessibility also feature heavily. “The lack of expertise goes beyond having data scientists available. Respondents often indicate that it is the knowledge of the end users and managers and directors that matters most,” Kicky van Leeuwen of MedicX.AI says.
Secondary and tertiary healthcare
What is striking is the difference between health professionals in secondary healthcare (including hospitals) and tertiary healthcare (highly specialised institutions). For example, clinicians who work in secondary care indicate that there is a lack of support within the medical staff for the development and implementation of data-driven solutions five times more often than clinicians in tertiary care. In addition, they are also less willing to work with AI technology and are more worried that AI will one day make their jobs redundant.
Investment and cooperation
Various parties are held responsible for investing in making healthcare more data-driven. The respondents most often opted for the healthcare institutions as the most logical driving force, closely followed by the big MedTech companies such as Siemens Healthineers and Philips, the government, and health insurers. Kicky van Leeuwen: “Ensuring the success of AI in healthcare obviously requires cooperation, both to be able to invest and to build knowledge to enable development and safe implementation.”
AI at the TechMed Centre
The TechMed Centre is highly committed to cooperation between clinicians, technicians and industry in the development and implementation of AI in healthcare. For example, within the research areas of the TechMed Centre researchers work on methods to enhance transparency and trust, give control to patients and clinicians themselves, and combine sources of information to make better predictions of diagnoses and treatment programmes. In the Health programmes of the UT students are taught to develop new technologies such as AI and implement them in everyday practice. The TechMed Centre also focuses on increasing impact by educating and training professionals in the application and further development of AI and data science for healthcare.
The entire Clinical Data Survey report can be downloaded without charge via Medicx.ai (in Dutch).
