Perspectives on the use of artificial intelligence: an online survey of health sciences students and faculty members

Purpose: AI-enabled health technologies are expected to assist healthcare professionals in providing evidence-based care while contributing to the global digital health transformation. However, aside from the availability of AI technology, academic settings are not always ready to embrace it. The objective of this study is to investigate health sciences students’ and faculty’s perspectives on using artificial intelligence in different curricula. Methods: Two validated questionnaires were distributed as online surveys to the students enrolled in the five colleges of Kuwait University’s health sciences centre. Categorical variables were summarized using frequencies and relative frequencies, while ordinal/Likert variables were summarized using means and standard deviations. We set the significance level for the statistical tests at 0.05. Results: The surveys revealed that students had greater gaps in technical skills and a greater need for AI-enabled health technology than faculty. The needs varied by college, with allied health sciences students having the greatest need and dentistry students having the least. Conclusions: The surveys highlighted gaps and unmet needs for AI-enabled health technology that must be addressed before integrating AI technology into the curriculum or patient care to improve access to care and support digital healthcare transformation. Our results may be used as a foundation to develop a recommendation for a task force to integrate AI technologies into the different health sciences curricula.