Artificial Intelligence in The Healthcare System; A Cross-Sectional Study Involving Medical Students

Introduction: Artificial Intelligence has brought revolutionary changes in the medical field in terms of diagnosis, surgeries, and rehabilitation. This study aims to assess the knowledge and perceptions of medical students regarding Artificial Intelligence. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study having a sample size of n= 210. The study was conducted in a medical university of Rawalpindi, among all the years of medicine. A pre-made questionnaire to assess the knowledge and perceptions of the students. The data was collected from September to December 2022. SPSS version 26 and Microsoft Excel were used for data analysis. The data were deposited in a repository of Zenodo with the persistent identifier. Results: Only 13% of students understood what is meant by neural networks. With 65.4% believing that AI will be able to help to establish a prognosis, 60.1% expressed their confidence in AI to replace humans in performing surgery, and 40.3% found it a threat to physicians’ jobs being replaced by AI. The majority (73.9%) of students thought that health equity will face quite a lot of new challenges if AI steps into medicine but they also agreed that AI skills should be ingrained in medical training. Conclusion: Medical students lack an understanding of AI but are quite optimistic that it has the potential to transform existing healthcare practices. Students believe that training in AI competencies should be added to their curriculum so that they can be well equipped with upcoming challenges.