Studying the Potential Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Physician Autonomy: Scoping Review

Physician autonomy has been found to play a role in physician acceptance and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine. However, there is still no consensus in the literature on how to define and assess physician autonomy. Furthermore, there is a lack of research focusing specifically on the potential effects of AI on physician autonomy.

This scoping review addresses the following research questions: (1) How do qualitative studies conceptualize and assess physician autonomy? (2) Which aspects of physician autonomy are addressed by these studies? (3) What are the potential benefits and harms of AI for physician autonomy identified by these studies?

We performed a scoping review of qualitative studies on AI and physician autonomy published before November 6, 2023, by searching MEDLINE and Web of Science. To answer research question 1, we determined whether the included studies explicitly include physician autonomy as a research focus and whether their interview, survey, and focus group questions explicitly name or implicitly include aspects of physician autonomy. To answer research question 2, we extracted the qualitative results of the studies, categorizing them into the 7 components of physician autonomy introduced by Schulz and Harrison. We then inductively formed subcomponents based on the results of the included studies in each component. To answer research question 3, we summarized the potentially harmful and beneficial effects of AI on physician autonomy in each of the inductively formed subcomponents.

The search yielded 369 studies after duplicates were removed. Of these, 27 studies remained after titles and abstracts were screened. After full texts were screened, we included a total of 7 qualitative studies. Most studies did not explicitly name physician autonomy as a research focus or explicitly address physician autonomy in their interview, survey, and focus group questions. No studies addressed a complete set of components of physician autonomy; while 3 components were addressed by all included studies, 2 components were addressed by none. We identified a total of 11 subcomponents for the 5 components of physician autonomy that were addressed by at least 1 study. For most of these subcomponents, studies reported both potential harms and potential benefits of AI for physician autonomy.

Little research to date has explicitly addressed the potential effects of AI on physician autonomy and existing results on these potential effects are mixed. Further qualitative and quantitative research is needed that focuses explicitly on physician autonomy and addresses all relevant components of physician autonomy.