A comparative study of artificial intelligence and human doctors for the purpose of triage and diagnosis

TL;DR

This study evaluates an AI triage and diagnostic system against human doctors, finding comparable diagnostic accuracy and safer triage recommendations, highlighting AI's potential to enhance patient care.

Contribution

It provides a prospective validation comparing AI and human doctors in triage and diagnosis, demonstrating AI's safety and accuracy in clinical decision-making.

Findings

AI system matches human doctors in diagnostic accuracy

AI triage recommendations are safer than those of humans

Study uses independent judges and benchmark vignettes for validation

Abstract

Online symptom checkers have significant potential to improve patient care, however their reliability and accuracy remain variable. We hypothesised that an artificial intelligence (AI) powered triage and diagnostic system would compare favourably with human doctors with respect to triage and diagnostic accuracy. We performed a prospective validation study of the accuracy and safety of an AI powered triage and diagnostic system. Identical cases were evaluated by both an AI system and human doctors. Differential diagnoses and triage outcomes were evaluated by an independent judge, who was blinded from knowing the source (AI system or human doctor) of the outcomes. Independently of these cases, vignettes from publicly available resources were also assessed to provide a benchmark to previous studies and the diagnostic component of the MRCGP exam. Overall we found that the Babylon AI powered Triage and Diagnostic System was able to identify the condition modelled by a clinical vignette with accuracy comparable to human doctors (in terms of precision and recall). In addition, we found that the triage advice recommended by the AI System was, on average, safer than that of human doctors, when compared to the ranges of acceptable triage provided by independent expert judges, with only a minimal reduction in appropriateness.