Potential Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

ABSTRACT

Healthcare systems worldwide are confronted with numerous challenges such as an aging population, an increasing number of chronically ill patients, innovations as cost drivers and growing cost pressure. The COVID-19 pandemic causes additional burden for healthcare systems. In order to overcome these challenges, digital technologies are increasingly used. Especially the past decade witnessed a tremendous boom of artificial intelligence (AI) within the healthcare sector. AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and to mitigate the challenges healthcare systems are confronted with. The existing literature has frequently examined specific benefits of AI within the healthcare sector. However, there are still research gaps according to different application areas in healthcare. For this reason, an empirical study design has been conducted to investigate the potentials of AI in healthcare and to consequently identify its role. Based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), the following application areas for key determinants in healthcare have been identified management tasks, medical diagnostics, medical treatment and drug discovery. By means of structural equation modeling (SEM), the study confirmed medical diagnostics and drug discovery as positive and significant influencing factors on the potential benefits of AI in healthcare. The other determinants didn't prove a significant influence. Based on the findings of the study, various recommendations have been derived to further exploit the potentials of AI in healthcare. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.