The widespread adoption of virtual care technologies has quickly reshaped healthcare operations and delivery, particularly in the context of community medicine. In this paper, we use the virtual care landscape as a point of departure to envision the promises and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. Our analysis is directed towards community care practitioners interested in learning more about how AI can change their practice along with the critical considerations required to integrate AI into their practice. We highlight examples of how AI can enable access to new sources of clinical data while augmenting clinical workflows and healthcare delivery. AI can help optimize how and when care is delivered by community practitioners while also improving practice efficiency, accessibility, and the overall quality of care. Unlike virtual care, however, AI is still missing many of the key enablers required to facilitate adoption into the community care landscape and there are challenges we must consider and resolve for AI to successfully improve healthcare delivery. We discuss several critical considerations, including data governance in the clinic setting, healthcare practitioner education, regulation of AI in healthcare, clinician reimbursement, and access to both technology and the internet.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Community medicine; Paediatrics; Regulation.
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