What is the role of human decisions in a world of artificial intelligence: an economic evaluation of human-AI collaboration in diabetic retinopathy screening
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Mar 26, 2025
Abstract
As Artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly integrated into the
medical field, the role of humans may become vague. While numerous studies
highlight AI's potential, how humans and AI collaborate to maximize the
combined clinical benefits remains unexplored. In this work, we analyze 270
screening scenarios from a health-economic perspective in a national diabetic
retinopathy screening program, involving eight human-AI collaborative
strategies and traditional manual screening. We find that annual copilot
human-AI screening in the 20-79 age group, with referral decisions made when
both humans and AI agree, is the most cost-effective strategy for human-AI
collaboration. The 'copilot' strategy brings health benefits equivalent to USD
4.64 million per 100,000 population compared to manual screening. These
findings demonstrate that even in settings where AI is highly mature and
efficient, human involvement remains essential to ensuring both health and
economic benefits. Our findings highlight the need to optimize human-AI
collaboration strategies for AI implementation into healthcare systems.
