Assessing Awareness and Perceptions of AI Ethics in Oman’s Healthcare System

Background: AI now performs diagnostic, triaging and administrative tasks in hospitals, raising concerns about liability for algorithmic errors, protection of patient information, and explainability. Few studies report actual knowledge of these issues among healthcare providers in Oman. Objective: To ask how aware healthcare professionals and stakeholders in Oman's healthcare system are of the ethical considerations attached to AI use. Methods: A qualitative interpretive design was used. Twenty semi-structured interviews were undertaken between September 2023 and January 2024 with purposefully selected stakeholders across the Quadruple Helix: government (n = 7), academia (n = 5), industry (n = 5) and non-governmental organisations (n = 3). Records were thematically coded in NVivo 15 following Braun and Clarke, using Rest's Four-Component Model and Scott's Institutional Theory. Results: All 20 respondents raised both themes: limited awareness of AI ethics, and AI ethics literacy gaps. Awareness diverged between respondents in the same category and drew little support from formal institutional dialogue. Privacy appeared in every record; bias, transparency and accountability in roughly two thirds; explainability in only four.Conclusions: Awareness is conceptual rather than critical, and is contingent upon institutional role rather than personal commitment to ethics. Training, policy and context-specific governance can shape those systems.