• Implications and challenges related to adoption of Artificial Intelligence for the Healthcare Workforce
  • Sara Kaveh,1,*
    1. PhD student in Health Economics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences


  • Introduction: The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI)-related technologies, especially in the healthcare sector, is evident to all. This review focus on how the health of human resource (HHR) is affected by AI. In the second part, HRH issues related to AI implementation are discussed.
  • Methods: To identify relevant literature, different keywords such as "artificial intelligence", "Healthcare Workforce", and "AI" were combined by Boolean operators in electronic databases like PubMed, Google Scholar, and Embase until August 2022. Journal articles written in English with available full text that examined the effect of AI on the Healthcare Workforce were included. Articles conducted in sectors other than healthcare were excluded.
  • Results: AI consists of a wide range of applications in healthcare such as decision support in clinical settings, automation of administrative tasks, automated imaging, drug design, and use of surgical robots. Thus, AI can affect HHR in different aspects. The results of applying AI can be categorized as follow: Performance, productivity, Workload, Workflow, satisfaction, and Physician-Patient Relationships. AI-based technologies can perform tasks that are labor and time-consuming, resulting in providing more free time for healthcare professionals to do more complicated tasks. AI can facilitate the workload of radiologists by faster scan time and reporting more accurate diagnoses. AI has leveraged three categories that can improve the workflow of healthcare providers. These consists of Clinical documentation, Quality-measurement reporting, and Point-of-care learning. By automation of these tasks, the workflow will change considerably so that physicians are free to do more complicated tasks that cannot be performed by machines. This ability will result in higher satisfaction for both providers and patients. As this patient tracking contributes to higher patient safety. However, AI brings advantages like increasing efficiency, quality, and return on investment, there are critical aspects that should be considered. AI-related issues are as follows: I) the regulatory and legal issues, II) ethical concerns about privacy and breach risks, III) infrastructure shortages, IV) the availability of data, and V) economic aspects.
  • Conclusion: It can be said that artificial intelligence has entered all aspects of daily life, and health care is not an exception. AI serves as an assistant in the health sector with the potential to enhance efficiency and improve healthcare quality and the volume of care delivered to patients. It has to be noted that the replacement scenario is impossible, as the human workforce cannot be replaced by machines entirely. While considering the benefits of AI adoption in healthcare, different issues ranging from legal and ethical aspects to economic aspects should not be neglected.
  • Keywords: artificial intelligence, AI, healthcare, health workers, Healthcare Workforce