Artificial Intelligence could become part of the front door to healthcare. It could make the health system simpler, more accessible, more responsive, more sustainable, and put patients more in control. But there’s a risk that the public could experience it more as a barrier than an open door, blocking access to care, offering opaque advice and dehumanising healthcare in every sense. We’re now at a crucial moment when decisions are being made which will determine whether the technology develops into People Powered AI.

Artificial intelligence (AI) looks like it could be one of the transformative technologies of our era. Healthcare is rich in the data that AI thrives on, and in the kinds of questions that it can tackle. While the use of AI in healthcare is at an earlier stage than the hyperbole surrounding the technology might suggest, it is developing at pace, and this raises both significant opportunities and risks.

AI has delivered some striking results. There have been research trials that successfully use machine learning on images from, for example, radiology, dermatology and ophthalmology, to a level of accuracy that matches clinicians’ own abilities. This, and other AI developments, have led to the suggestion that machines are poised take the place of doctors.

However, today’s AI is narrow and not capable of the holistic thinking and complex judgement required for many clinical tasks. While there are significant areas of medicine where more narrow applications of decision-making rules and expert pattern matching predominate, the path towards AI replacing humans is not solely determined by technical capability. Technology implementation will need to address trust, accountability and similar factors. And, at the same time, humans remain especially good at certain tasks, such as learning to identify rare situations from small amounts of data.

This jump to focusing on whether or not AI could replace doctors also potentially distracts from some far more immediate and likely applications of AI in health. It is far easier for AI to be adopted where there are no or few good alternatives on offer, than in areas where humans are effective and trusted.