Growing Physician Enthusiasm for AI in Healthcare Save

The AMA has just published the results of a U.S. Physician survey and shown MD attitudes have positively shifted regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare.

The AMA defines AI has having a wide range of potential use cases in healthcare, including but not limited to deriving insight for better clinical decisions and relieving physicians and staff from time-consuming and burdensome tasks so they can spend more time with patients.

These surveys were meant to study of physician’s attitudes towards the use of AI in health care including current use and future motivations for use, key concerns, areas of greatest opportunity, and requirements for adoption.  The survey sample was drawn from practicing physicians in the AMA Physician Professional Data file, and included 1,183 respondents (1,183 PCPs, 464 Specialists, Physician Practice Owners 719;  Employed Physicians 724).

Key Messages

A growing majority of physicians recognize AI’s benefits, with 68% in 2024 reporting at least some advantage in patient care (up from 63% in 2023). 

There has been substantial AI growth in physician practices - AI use cases nearly doubled (66% in 2024 vs. 38% in 2023). 

There has been a dramatic drop in AI non-users (62% to 33%) in just one year (unusually fast for healthcare technology adoption). 

Greatest areas of growth (since 2023) are more physicians currently using AI for visit documentation, discharge summaries and care plans, and medical research and standard of care summaries. 

Addressing administrative burden remains a key area of opportunity for AI in healthcare. 

Physicians still have key needs to build trust and advance adoption of AI. Physicians emphasize the need for a feedback loop, data privacy assurances, seamless workflow integration, and adequate training and education as critical factors for AI adoption.  Nearly half of physicians (47%) ranked increased oversight as the number one regulatory action needed to increase trust in adopting AI tools.