Is My Doctor Human? Acceptance of AI among Patients with Breast Cancer

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important in society, and medicine can benefit from its advantages. What scenario can we envision when AI becomes as powerful and accurate as human physicians? How will the traditional patient-doctor relationship be affected by AI? Will patients come to trust and accept AI-assisted healthcare as much as their human counterparts? Our research team has been working on applications of AI in plastic surgery for more than 4 years. Between 2020 and 2024, AI algorithms were developed by the authors and applied on patients for symmetry evaluation after breast cancer surgery. Patients were aware of being evaluated with images for AI model training and assessment. Feedback was reported, and a survey was carried out among patients who underwent evaluation by our team. Among patients with breast cancer who underwent surgical reconstruction, 65% of patients reported very high levels of comfort with AI, given that it was mediated by a human doctor. Patients stated that nondoctor-mediated AI in medicine would greatly reduce trust. The influence of AI on the patient-doctor relationship is an important aspect that will greatly affect medicine. In this preliminary work, patients showed high levels of trust and comfort with the use of AI in healthcare, despite stating that they knew little about AI. Patients insisted that the mediation of a human doctor is key for acceptance. Currently, little is known about the acceptance of AI in medical roles among patients.