Survey reveals 'trust gap' in the value of AI to cardiology

It seems cardiologists are more optimistic than patients about the potential of AI in helping cardiac teams improve care and save lives.

More than 80% of cardiac care professionals think AI can help tackle major issues facing teams, including lengthening delays in seeing specialists, incomplete or inaccessible patient data, and repetitive tasks that eat up their time, according to a survey carried out by Dutch tech giant Royal Philips.

Cardiac patients remain much more cautious, however, with only 56% of them saying they are optimistic that AI could improve their care. Among their concerns is that AI will lead to less face-to-face time with a doctor, and their reservations track up with the importance of the task undertaken.

For example, patients are generally happy for AI to handle administrative tasks like making appointments or checking in, but much less so when it comes to delivering clinical assessments and even relatively straightforward applications like writing up notes.

At the same time, 91% of cardiac patients surveyed across 16 countries said they had experienced delays in seeing a specialist, with an average wait time of nearly 12 weeks, while more than 80% of cardiac care professionals believe AI could help them become more efficient, extending their clinical capacity and allowing them to deliver diagnoses sooner.

Three-quarters of them are losing clinical time due to patient data gaps, and a third say they lose more than 45 minutes per shift as a result, equivalent to more than four working weeks over the course of a year.

On the other hand, more than a third of the cardiology respondents said they had concerns around legal liability and assurance that AI systems are monitored and transparent.

In the report, Philips' chief innovation officer Shez Partovi and chief medical officer Carla Goulart Peron warn that a projected shortfall of 11 million healthcare workers around the world by 2030 could leave millions without access to timely care, and AI has the potential to be "a powerful accelerator – and perhaps our most compelling opportunity – to meet rising healthcare demands as populations age."

They add: "As AI transforms healthcare, trust and innovation must go hand in hand to bring life-saving solutions to more patients and providers, faster – and with the right safeguards."

The payoff of implementing AI effectively could be huge, according to Jose Zamorano, chief of cardiology at the University Hospital Ramón y Cajal in Madrid, Spain.

"AI offers clear, immense potential across multiple stages of clinical practice. In enhancing diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, I see huge value in AI for image analysis – particularly in interpreting complex cardiovascular imaging and identifying abnormalities that might otherwise be missed by the human eye," he said.

"AI will enable faster data processing, and I'm sure will reduce administrative burdens on clinicians. This will allow me to dedicate more time to patient care."