IMPACT OF APPLYING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS INSIGHT (A QUALITATIVE SURVEY STUDY IN HAFR-ELBATIN, SAUDI ARABIA)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is branch of data science enable machines to emulate human thinking. Implementation of AI in the medical field provides a great opportunity to change face of healthcare service by improving diagnosis, service quality, and reduce the cost. The aim of this study is to assess the awareness of AI programs among staff working at healthcare field in Hafr-Elbatin, and to investigate their health professionals insight toward AI applications inhealthcare. Online google form survey targeted healthcare professionals in Hafr El-Batin, Saudi Arabia. Out of 1400 distributed survey, 234 responses were received. The results showed 40.2% of the participants havent used AI applications in their work, 35.9% didnt know the difference between machine learning and deep learning, only 13.7% use AI applications at work daily. Regarding attitude, 82.1% of participants suspected that using AI may be a serious privacy issue, 76.9% agreed that AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons, and 73 are worried that AI may replace their jobs in the future, and 88.9% believed that AI could be useful in my area of work. In contrast to agreeing on usefulness of AI in healthcare field, there is a limited knowledge about AI technologies and concern about potential consequence of its implementation in the medical field. Further studies are needed to investigate the attitude regarding AI application, better education and regulatory framework are required as well.