AI and Its Role in Health Literacy
With the rise of AI, we now have vast amounts of information available right at our fingertips. Any question we want answered can be entered into an AI chatbox, and a response will be output within a matter of seconds, giving an easy way to consume knowledge without spending hours searching through websites. This has me wondering if we are able to use AI to improve health literacy. In this article, I will be discussing the benefits and drawbacks of using AI in health literacy.
Using AI can be beneficial in making health literacy more accessible to the general public. The article, “The Role of AI in Health Literacy: Benefits, Concerns, and Call to Action,” states that it provides a fast and easy way to simplify complex topics to patients so that they can better understand their own health conditions or medical procedures. Plus, it can be used to bridge health gaps in underserved communities by providing health education in an accessible and inexpensive way. It can also be a valuable tool to break language barriers and translate medical terms to patients who don’t share the same primary language as their doctors. Thus, all of these benefits can help patients become more knowledgeable about their health and aid in the prevention of many chronic illnesses.
However, using AI as a source of health information also has its drawbacks. Many people assume that AI takes on a neutral role, but in reality, it is full of gender and racial biases. The article “Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem With Gender and Racial Bias. Here’s How to Solve It” reports that in a study measuring error rates in gender classification, the AI misidentified lighter-skinned men less than 1% of the time, while darker-skinned women were misclassified 35% of the time. Within a healthcare setting, AI will often underestimate the risk of chronic conditions in black patients. In reality, black patients are more likely to have a chronic condition than white patients. AI takes data from large datasets, but they are often biased and leave out underrepresented communities. Thus, AI is more likely to misdiagnose patients in underrepresented communities, which may lead to an increase in health gaps.
In addition, AI may provide misleading information and give poor advice to patients. No amount of information and symptoms a patient provides to an AI can replace a full evaluation by a doctor. Misinformation may cause patients to make wrong choices when it comes to their health, which only exacerbates the problem. In addition, misinformation may lead to distrust in the doctor’s diagnoses and treatments.
In conclusion, AI can be a helpful way to simplify medical information and can be used to some extent, but it cannot replace a doctor. Thus, policymakers and healthcare workers should work together to establish clear boundaries in AI use for medicine and address biases present before AI takes on larger roles in health literacy.
references:
“The Role of AI in Health Literacy: Benefits, Concerns, and Call to Action | College of Medicine Chicago | University of Illinois College of Medicine.” Uic.edu, 2022, chicago.medicine.uic.edu/news-stories/ai-in-health-literacy/.
Buolamwini, Joy. “Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem with Gender and Racial Bias. Here’s How to Solve It.” MIT Media Lab, 7 Feb. 2019, www.media.mit.edu/articles/artificial-intelligence-has-a-problem-with-gender-and-racial-bias-here-s-how-to-solve-it/.
picture credit: https://capestart.com/resources/blog/how-ai-systems-can-improve-healthcare-diagnosis-and-treatment/