Abstract
BackgroundIt is unlikely that applications of artificial intelligence (AI) will completely replace physicians. However, it is very likely that AI applications will acquire many of their roles and generate new tasks in medical care. To be ready for new roles and tasks, medical students and physicians will need to understand the fundamentals of AI and data science, mathematical concepts, and related ethical and medico-legal issues in addition with the standard medical principles. Nevertheless, there is no valid and reliable instrument available in the literature to measure medical AI readiness. In this study, we have described the development of a valid and reliable psychometric measurement tool for the assessment of the perceived readiness of medical students on AI technologies and its applications in medicine.MethodsTo define medical students’ required competencies on AI, a diverse set of experts’ opinions were obtained by a qualitative method and were used as a theoretical framework, while creating the item pool of the scale. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were applied.ResultsA total of 568 medical students during the EFA phase and 329 medical students during the CFA phase, enrolled in two different public universities in Turkey participated in this study. The initial 27-items finalized with a 22-items scale in a four-factor structure (cognition, ability, vision, and ethics), which explains 50.9% cumulative variance that resulted from the EFA. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was 0.87. CFA indicated appropriate fit of the four-factor model (χ2/df = 3.81, RMSEA = 0.094, SRMR = 0.057, CFI = 0.938, and NNFI (TLI) = 0.928). These values showed that the four-factor model has construct validity.ConclusionsThe newly developed Medical Artificial Intelligence Readiness Scale for Medical Students (MAIRS-MS) was found to be valid and reliable tool for evaluation and monitoring of perceived readiness levels of medical students on AI technologies and applications.Medical schools may follow ‘a physician training perspective that is compatible with AI in medicine’ to their curricula by using MAIRS-MS. This scale could be benefitted by medical and health science education institutions as a valuable curriculum development tool with its learner needs assessment and participants’ end-course perceived readiness opportunities.
Highlights
It is unlikely that applications of artificial intelligence (AI) will completely replace physicians
In the present article we describe the development of a reliable scale for measuring the perceived medical artificial intelligence readiness of medical students and tested its validity
It is not anticipated that AI will replace the role of physicians, but it will definitely undertake many tasks belonging to physicians, bringing healthcare services to a better level with faster pace, there is a need to create new tasks and new learning requirements for physicians, which will assist in reshaping their professional identities [2, 23, 41]
Summary
It is unlikely that applications of artificial intelligence (AI) will completely replace physicians. We have described the development of a valid and reliable psychometric measurement tool for the assessment of the perceived readiness of medical students on AI technologies and its applications in medicine Information processing technologies those were used to assist humanity in numerical calculations, have become instantaneously processing data that is too complex for the human brain to be calculated in parallel with the geometric increase in their capacities. AI has the potential to aid in early detection of infectious disease outbreaks [12] and its sources such as water contamination to protect public health [13] Such AI applications might play an important role in reducing the patient care burden on many healthcare professionals or pave the way for reaching more patients [3]
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