As European doctors retire, could AI help to solve a health workforce shortage?

Amid an aging workforce and health worker shortages in Europe, AI technologies offer potential relief by automating administrative tasks in healthcare. Experts believe AI can reduce burdens on clinicians, freeing them for face-to-face patient care. While some worry about job loss, the current focus is augmenting administrative roles rather than replacing them.

Experts say AI is not there to replace health workers but rather could help to automate some of the more administrative tasks that fall on them.

As a growing number of research studies analyse the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in detecting diseases or interpreting patient data, these technologies could soon become more widely available in doctors’ offices.

But how could that change the workload for doctors and nurses? It’s a question that many experts in the field have been considering as European countries face health worker shortages.

“We do know we have a huge health workforce crisis and shortage in terms of when one looks at the demographic trends and looks at the numbers of health workers that are going to be available in the coming years,” Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, the World Health Organization (WHO) European regional office’s director of country health policies and systems, told Euronews Next.

In many European countries, populations are ageing, and this will have consequences on the workforce, with many general practitioners (GPs), for instance, retiring in the coming years.

Share this:

Related