Guidelines, Consensus Statements, and Standards for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Systematic Review

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the delivery of health care is a promising area, and guidelines, consensus statements, and standards on AI regarding various topics have been developed.

We performed this study to assess the quality of guidelines, consensus statements, and standards in the field of AI for medicine and to provide a foundation for recommendations about the future development of AI guidelines.

We searched 7 electronic databases from database establishment to April 6, 2022, and screened articles involving AI guidelines, consensus statements, and standards for eligibility. The AGREE II (Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation II) and RIGHT (Reporting Items for Practice Guidelines in Healthcare) tools were used to assess the methodological and reporting quality of the included articles.

This systematic review included 19 guideline articles, 14 consensus statement articles, and 3 standard articles published between 2019 and 2022. Their content involved disease screening, diagnosis, and treatment; AI intervention trial reporting; AI imaging development and collaboration; AI data application; and AI ethics governance and applications. Our quality assessment revealed that the average overall AGREE II score was 4.0 (range 2.2-5.5; 7-point Likert scale) and the mean overall reporting rate of the RIGHT tool was 49.4% (range 25.7%-77.1%).

The results indicated important differences in the quality of different AI guidelines, consensus statements, and standards. We made recommendations for improving their methodological and reporting quality.

PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (CRD42022321360); https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=321360.