A study has found that one in four GPs in the UK are using artificial intelligence (AI) during everyday tasks at work, despite not being trained how to utilise the technology.
A quarter of GPs are using artificial intelligence (AI) at work despite not having the training.
A year-on-year survey of General Practitioners in the UK on generative AI has revealed an increase in the number of doctors using sites such as ChatGPT in their everyday work.
A vast majority (95 per cent) of doctors who said they use generative AI at work said they had no professional training and 85 per cent suggested that their employer had not encouraged its use.
Last year, the same study found that only one in five GPs were using the technology.
Dr. Charlotte Blease, from Uppsala University in Sweden and Harvard Medical School, said: “In just 12 months, generative AI has gone from taboo to tool in British medicine.
“Doctors are using these systems because they help – not because anyone told them to. The real risk isn’t that GPs are using AI; it’s that they’re doing it without training or oversight.”
The study found that 35 per cent of doctors used AI for writing documentation, 27 per cent for differential diagnoses and 24 per cent for treatment or referrals.
The research’s authors, from Uppsala University, Basel University, the Karolinska Institute, the University of Manchester and Harvard Medical School, surveyed 1,005 GPs across the UK.
Dr. Blease said: “This should be a wake-up call.
“AI is already being used in everyday medicine. The challenge now is to ensure it’s deployed safely, ethically and openly.”
The experts have highlighted the perils of using AI in clinical settings due to the technology’s tendency to make errors and the possibility of “algorithmic discrimination” because of potential biases in the models’ training data.
One in four GPs use AI at work despite a lack of training
