Patient trust is not a barrier to artificial intelligence (AI) adoption by medical imaging professionals, according to a new study by Intelerad, a global leader in medical image management solutions.
This is just one finding from Intelerad’s wide-ranging study that queried over 1,000 healthcare consumers across the U.S. to uncover the impact of healthcare’s digital transformation on the healthcare consumer in a post-pandemic world. The results unveil new insights into patient attitudes toward AI. Key findings include:
Patient trust is not a barrier to AI adoption in medical imaging. 64% of respondents either trust or are neutral about a diagnosis solely from AI. When asked to rate their level of trust in a diagnosis by a radiologist assisted by an AI application, a whopping 79% of respondents reported they trust or are neutral about it. Respondents aged 55+ are much more likely to trust diagnoses assisted by AI as opposed to solely relying on it (59% compared to 22%). Not surprisingly, trust in AI correlates with age: the younger an individual, the more likely they are to trust it.

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AI is highly trusted for making appointments and organizing a radiologist’s workload. When it comes to specific activities, 88% of respondents trust or are neutral about AI’s role in making appointments. Additionally, 86% trust or are neutral about AI organizing a radiologist's workload by flagging questionable abnormalities.
Education is key: Patients do not know when their radiology services are supported by AI. Only 19% of respondents believed they received care supported by AI, while 24% did not know, and 58% believed they had not. The younger an individual, the more likely they were to believe that AI has played a role in their care, with only 4% of 55+ believing so.
Healthcare consumers believe AI will play a major role in medical imaging in the future. The majority of respondents (60%) think that AI will perform over half of radiology services in five years, with that number increasing to 75% of respondents in the next 20 years. Furthermore, 8% of individuals think AI will account for 100% of services in the next five years, with that number increasing to 19% of respondents by 2042.
Sentiments among healthcare consumers diverge from current uptake of AI across the radiology field. Approximately 30% of radiologists are currently using AI as part of their practice and among those not currently deploying AI, 20% plan to purchase AI tools in the next one to five years, according to research from the ACR Data Institute.