Patients’ Perceptions of Integrating AI into Healthcare: Systems Thinking Approach

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become more integrated into healthcare with a promising future. The expansion and application of Artificial Intelligence depend on technologies, policymakers, healthcare providers, as well as patients. Nevertheless, how to systematically understand AI interventions from the patients' perspectives should be further explored. In this paper, we first outline patients' perceptions of integrating AI into healthcare systems through a brief survey-based case study. Next, we emphasized the challenges and concerns of applying AI to complex healthcare systems while considering the components' interactions. Then a three-layer structure was proposed to highlight the complexity of Human-AI-Technology interactions linked to the governance system. Moreover, a causal loop diagram (CLD) is established to analyze the dynamic and causality of the adoption of AI in healthcare inspired by the systems thinking approach to help understand the patients' attitudes and perceptions of the whole picture.