Patient attitudes toward ambient artificial intelligence scribes in clinical care: insights from a cross-sectional study

Comprehensive Summary

Chandrasekaran and Moustakas aimed to determine patients' attitudes regarding artificial intelligence (AI) usage as clinical scribes, including their comfort, trust, perceived effectiveness, and willingness to allow AI in future clinical encounters. The authors further investigated how patients' attitudes were influenced by socioeconomic, health literacy, and privacy factors. Despite varied attitudes toward AI, a majority of patients (61.8%) reported hesitancy to allow future AI scribe usage. Males, individuals with higher socioeconomic status, and those with greater health literacy were more likely to trust AI and express willingness to use it in the future. The results demonstrate patient reluctance to accept AI scribe usage, with privacy concerns and lack of awareness serving as important barriers to adoption.

Outcomes and Implications

Artificial intelligence has the capacity to be a useful tool in medicine due to its ability to improve efficiency and patient outcomes. Despite this potential, patients are not fully accepting of its broad usage in clinical documentation, meaning widespread implementation should be carefully considered. Trust is a primary component of acceptance and is closely tied to diligent physician oversight. Clinicians must be transparent about privacy measures and data security when implementing AI scribes. To achieve broader patient acceptance, robust ethical and privacy safeguards are needed to ensure patient comfort and trust.