The Perils of Artificial Intelligence in a Clinical Landscape

Primary care in the US is in acute-on-chronic crisis. After decades of evidence-defying fiscal and structural neglect, changes to primary care practice —including shorter appointment times, increasing patient and management complexity, growing electronic medical record burden, staffing shortages, and crises involving COVID-19, opioid use disorder, and mental health disorders—have created a reality in which there are not enough hours in the day for primary care clinicians to do their jobs. This has led to burnout and clinician shortages, perpetuating a cycle of decline. In this issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, Sarkar and Bates suggest that artificial intelligence (AI) may be coming to provide some reprieve. In this Viewpoint, they acknowle dge the limitations of AI, as well as that scrupulous oversight will be required during the introduction of AI into primary care. This oversight will avoid inflicting further harm onto patients, clinicians, and the field of primary care.
Source: JAMA Internal Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Source Type: research