Healthcare’s AI scepticism overshadowed by its fear of missing out

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is no longer limited to popular events with 73% of Australia’s IT leaders reporting they are worried about their organisation missing out on artificial intelligence benefits because of slow uptake.

Meanwhile, almost all (97%) of Australian respondents in the ABBYY State of Intelligent Automation Report: AI Trust Barometer said they plan to increase AI investments over the next year.

Key points

• AI investment in Australia is highly customer-driven with 68% of respondents citing customer pressure as a driving influence
• Local leaders are also the most motivated to address employee burnout with 42% interested in using AI to relieve employee workloads, compared to 32% globally
• IT decision-makers from Australia reported average AI investments of $1.09 million (about $212,719 below the global average)
• Purpose-built AI and small language models (SLMs) are trusted among 95% of Australian respondents, the highest globally

Early adopters of artificial intelligence in aged care are already benefiting from its impact with executives from McLean Care, Mercy Care and Alino Living sharing their highlights in a webinar earlier this year. 

Examples of use include chatbots that share relevant policy and procedural content when staff are searching internal databases, plus AI tools that transfer and analyse data and information. 

Artificial intelligence is also often used for staff onboarding, marketing, finance, administration and in for compliance purposes.

There is a certain level of apprehension towards AI, though, with Australians most concerned by the cost of implementation, the lack of talent or expertise internally, technical complexity and staff misuse.

Most see its benefits, however, with 85% of IT leaders trusting AI tools to benefit their business. The use of purpose-built artificial intelligence and small language models (SLM)- a machine-learning algorithm typically trained on small data sets within an organisation – are cited as trustworthy by nine in 10 IT experts.

“It’s no surprise to me that organizations have more trust in small language models due to the tendency of LLMs (large-language models) to hallucinate and provide inaccurate and possibly harmful outcomes. We’re seeing more business leaders moving to SLMs to better address their specific business needs, enabling more trustworthy results,” Maxime Vermeir, Senior Director of AI Strategy at ABBYY shared. 

Globally speaking, the healthcare sector is the most sceptical about AI, especially due to concerns over staff misuse. Just under 50% of healthcare representatives said this was a major worry, while overall, 77% said they were unsure about how AI would benefit their business. 

Accuracy of data (55%), accuracy in interpretation and analysis (48%) and cybersecurity/data breaches (39%) were the other top fears alongside staff misuse. Despite this, 95% of healthcare leaders will increase budgets next year and 60% plan to increase investment by between 11% and 30%.

Ineterestingly, while Australian IT leaders prefer SLMs, the global preference in healthcare is LLMs with 92% saying they trust large-language models trained on vast amounts of data, with purpose-built AI such as intelligent document processing almost equal with 91% trust.

“It’s interesting to see the healthcare sector’s faith in LLMs despite the initial scepticism towards their tendency to hallucinate or provide inaccurate results,” Ms Vermeir added.

“This indicates that the market is maturing by incorporating purpose-built tools and systems like IDP (intelligent document processing) and RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) into their AI strategy, using them to address specific business needs and enable more trust in LLM-powered solutions.”

Aged care providers should still tread carefully around AI if they use SLMs or LLMs with training, appropriate policy coverage and cybersecurity all essential safeguards. 

Only half of healthcare organisations reportedly have policies in place that security and compliance teams adhere to, and just 39% plan to implement policies soon. Regulation is a benefit here, though, as 95% of all healthcare recipients are confident that their company is regulating AI well.