In the past few months, generative AI has taken off after OpenAI’s ChatGPT impressed people with what it could do. But a new GE HealthCare (GEHC) poll shows that people are still very skeptical in the healthcare field.

The international GE survey showed that at least 55% of medical workers say AI is not ready for use in medicine. Only 26% of people in the US think AI can be trusted, compared to 42% of people around the world. In the study, there were 7,500 clinicians, such as doctors, physician assistants, and public health medics, as well as 7,500 patients and patient advocates from eight countries.

AI at GE

Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, the chief technology officer at GE HealthCare, has been a proponent of using AI and technology in health care. He said he gets the study’s and a recent study by the medical journal BMJ’s concerns. BMJ said that one of the risks of medicine and healthcare is that AI mistakes could hurt patients and that there could be problems with data privacy and security.

Kass-Hout said that it is important to start handling the needs and pain points of clinicians, who have often had to deal with technology that is not intuitive or easy to use for the work they do. Electronic health records, also called electronic medical records (EMRs), are a great example.

“Right now, the tools are being made by techies. EMR is the system that keeps track of all the data and puts it all together. But every doctor or nurse has to go there, and it’s not fun. “It’s really, really hard to get data out,” Kass-Hout said.

It’s also important to include clinicians in the design process, especially since 42% of the people surveyed said they are actively looking to leave the business.

People are leaving because the pandemic has made them very tired and total job satisfaction has changed. The use of AI could push a lot of workers over the edge, especially older ones.

The Lille University Hospital in France was the first place in the world where GE Healthcare’s Discovery IGS 730 was set up and used in a hospital setting.
The GE Healthcare Discovery IGS 730 was set up and used in a hospital for the first time in the world at the Lille University Hospital in France.
But, he said, AI is already being used in many ways that work well, such as medical imaging and collecting and studying health data.

Kass-Hout said that radiologists, for example, can spend hours looking at layers and angles of pictures to help find the exact spot where cancer is. With AI, the search could be done in 15 to 20 minutes.

“You can guess now that the experts will get their time back. So, he said, “we’re really working on heavy lifts and solving problems in this clinical workflow.”

But he also knows that patients and doctors have a hard time trusting each other. The GE poll found that 39% of patients don’t think their health information is kept safe.

“Training is essential. Kass-Hout said, “It’s not enough to just give them a book to read.”

People are worried about how to regulate AI in general, and the FDA is trying to figure out how to regulate how AI and digital tools are used in the business. New rules could help workers feel more at ease with the new technology in a big way.

So, Kass-Hout is hoping that AI will be used quickly and easily.

“When Fahrenheit invented the thermometer,” he said, “it took 100 years for people to trust it and use it.” AI shouldn’t have to wait 100 years.”