JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The potential for digital health technologies, including machine learning-enabled tools, to disrupt the medical profession is the subject of ongoing debate within biomedical informatics.

Objective:

To describe the opinions of final year medical students in Ireland regarding the potential of future technology to replace, and work alongside, general practitioners (GPs) in performing key tasks.

Methods:

Between March 2019 to April 2020, using a cross-sectional design, we conducted a mixed methods paper-based survey of final year medical students. The survey was administered at four out of seven medical schools in Ireland across each of the four provinces in the country.

Results:

In total 252 of 585 (43%) of final year students at three medical schools responded, and data collection at one medical school was terminated due to the disruption of COVID-19. Forecasting the potential impact of artificial intelligence/machine learning on primary care 25 years from now, around half of all surveyed students believed the job of GPs will change minimally or there will be no change. Notably, students who did not intend to enter primary care predicted AI/ML would have greater impact on the job of GPs.

Conclusions:

We caution that without a firm curricular foundation on advances in AI/ML students may rely on extreme perspectives – self-preserving optimism biases which demote the impact of advances of technologies on primary care, on the one hand, or techno-hype on the other. Ultimately, both approaches may lead to negative consequences in healthcare. Improvements in medical education could better help prepare tomorrow’s doctors to optimize the ethical, evidence-based implementation of AI/ML-enabled tools in medicine to enhance the care of tomorrow’s patients.