I’m very excited to share our new paper, showing Australian women are divided on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in breast cancer screening. While AI has the potential to enhance the accuracy of mammogram reviews and reduce healthcare costs, many women remain sceptical.
Our study, which used a discrete choice experiment to survey over 800 Australian women, sought to understand their feelings about this technology and whether it would affect their participation in breast cancer screening.
There were mixed reactions about using AI in breast cancer screening. 40% of respondents were open to using AI if it proves more accurate than human radiologists. However, 42% were strongly opposed, and 18% had reservations that need addressing.
If it is going to be implemented, women want the AI to be accurate, Australian-owned, representative of Australian women, and faster than human radiologists. We saw that up to 22% of respondents might reduce their participation in breast cancer screening if AI is implemented in a way that makes them uncomfortable.
This supports what we see in other countries. In particular, people expect AI systems to have strong evidence they perform better than current systems before implementation. This evidence is currently not available, suggesting that implementing AI now could undermine trust in breast cancer screening programs.
This study was funded through a Sydney Cancer Institute Seed Grant, and was done with a great group of collaborators: Stacy Carter, Helen Frazer, Nehmat Houssami, Mary Macheras-Magias, Genevieve Webb, and Luke Marinovich. I want to give a special shout out to our consumer and lived experience collaborators who were instrumental in developing and interpreting the results: Genevieve Webb (nominated through Health Consumers NSW) and Mary Macheras-Magias (nominated through BCNA Seat at the Table program).
- You can read the full paper here: https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.35859
- You can read a summary of the paper in The Conversation here: https://theconversation.com/australian-women-are-wary-of-ai-being-used-in-breast-cancer-screening-new-research-253340
- You can see an Infographic of our results here: Infographic – women’s preferences for AI in breast cancer screening.
