An Assessment of Knowledge, Perception and Barriers to the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Medical Practice among Doctors in A Nigerian Tertiary Hospital

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the application of machine-based systems designed to replicate human problem-solving and decision making processes. The relevance of AI cuts across hospital data management, consultation and treatment recommendations, patient engagement and adherence, and administrative undertakings. Application of AI in healthcare is meant to improve the quality of healthcare and not to replace the health workers. This study examined the knowledge, perception and barriers to the use AI in medical practice among physicians in a Nigerian tertiary hospital with the aim of exploring the prospects and future of AI in clinical practice in our environment.

Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study among 110 physicians. A multistage sampling technique was employed, where a simple random sampling and stratified random sampling methods were adopted for stage 1 and 2 respectively. All the statistical analyses were done using IBM statistics package for social sciences (SPSS) version 21. Associations between the variables were tested for statistical significance using appropriate statistical tools. The level of significance was set at p<0.05.

Results: The mean age of the respondents was 38.3±11.1 years. The majority (94.5%) of the participants have heard of AI and the internet was the main source of information (58.2%). Majority (81.8%) of the respondents had interest in training in AI and 83.6% were willing to use AI. Poor funding (38.2%) was the major barrier in the application of AI. Majority (86.4%) of the respondents had a good perception about AI, have heard of the application of AI in medical practice (85.5%), and believed AI can improve health services delivery (80%). However, few of the respondents (25.5%) had applied AI to their medical practice.

Conclusion: This study showed that majority of the physicians were aware of AI and were also willing to use it in their medical practice. Also, it was observed that majority of the physicians had good perception about AI. However, only a quarter of the participants have applied AI in their clinical practice.