It cannot do all of my work: Community healthworker perceptions of ai-enabled mobile health applications in rural india

Abstract

Recent advances in Artifcial Intelligence (AI) suggest that AI ap-plications could transform healthcare delivery in the Global South. However, as researchers and technology companies rush to develop AI applications that aid the health of marginalized communities, it is critical to consider the needs and perceptions of the community health workers (CHWs) who will have to integrate these AI appli-cations into the essential healthcare services they provide to rural communities. We describe a qualitative study examining CHWs' perceptions of an AI application for automated disease diagnosis. Drawing on data from 21 interviews with CHWs in rural India, we characterize (1) CHWs' knowledge, perceptions, and understand-ings of AI; and (2) the benefts and challenges that CHWs anticipate as AI applications are integrated into their workfows, including their opinions on automation of their work, possible misdiagnosis and errors, data access and surveillance issues, security and pri-vacy challenges, and questions concerning trust. We conclude by discussing the implications of our work for HCI and AI research in low-resource environments.