September 11th, 2023, Bhavika Bansal
Valued at approximately 8.8 billion GBP in 2021, the global artificial intelligence (AI) healthcare market is projected to be worth approximately 150 billion GBP in 2030. Developing rapidly, AI and machine learning are revolutionising not just the basic ways in which we live, work and connect, but also important aspects of our daily lives like healthcare. But are consumers ready for an AI or robot to provide healthcare services?
In this article, we analyse the latest YouGov Surveys: Serviced poll results to better understand which healthcare services Britons are willing to receive from AI or robots.
While more than a third of Britons say they would be willing to receive monitoring and analysis of their health data by an AI (36%), a third feel the same way about robot-assisted surgeries (34%).
Nearly three out of ten consumers indicate that they would not be willing to receive any of the given healthcare services from an AI or robot. However, an equal proportion say they would be okay with a robot filling and dispensing medications to a patient instead of a pharmacist (30%).
Less than a fifth of adults in Great Britain say they would be okay with an AI or a robot providing tailored personalized health programs (18%) or general physician services (13%). Just a twentieth of respondents say the same about receiving counselling or mental health services through a chatbot (5%).
A closer look at the data by age and gender demographics reveals interesting differences.
Nearly two in five Britons aged 55 and over (39%) are open to robot-assisted surgery, a higher rate compared to roughly a third of those aged 18-34 and 35-54 (31% and 30%, respectively).
Similarly, this 55+ age group is more inclined than their younger counterparts - 18-34- and 35–54-year-old Britons - to accept urgent or intensive care from AI, with a quarter (26%) showing willingness as opposed to 20% and 17% in the younger groups.
Conversely, those aged 18-34 are the most receptive of all age groups to personalized health programmes (24%) and AI-led treatment for common medical conditions (17%).
A look at the gendered data shows us that men seem to be generally more accepting of healthcare services provided by an AI or robot than women.
A significantly larger share of our male respondents compared to our female respondents say they would be okay with an AI monitoring their health data (40% vs. 31%) and an algorithm analysing a scan and diagnosing a condition (31% vs. 21%).
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 437 and 2,045 for each market. The sample size for Great Britain is 2,045. All surveys were conducted online in June 2023. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.