Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools for Diabetes Care: Protocol for Exploring Patient Attitude and Perspective

The prevalence of diabetes is still rising across the world. The high increase in incidence and economic load from diabetes leads to efforts to seek more effective ways to treat and care for diabetic patients. One of the ways is to explore the significant contribution of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. AI has been defined as the ability of computers to perform tasks typically related to human intelligence and their applications are believed to be an essential part of healthcare services that could be embedded into several aspects of clinical diabetic care. However, there is still a lack of research exploring diabetic patients’ attitudes and perspectives toward AI applications. Thus, in this study, patients' attitudes and perspectives toward the use of artificial tools for diabetic care will be studied. It is important to understand the patients’ views because it will have a positive impact on how research is going to be conducted and to ensure that the work is relevant and useful and that any concerns can be addressed at the beginning. This paper aims to present the preliminary work for this study. A qualitative research design is chosen for this observational study where semi-structured interviews will be used as the data collection method. The participants will be the current patients within a government tertiary hospital located in the south of the royal town of Klang, Selangor, Malaysia. Prior to the study, the concepts of attitude, perspective, and related theories and models are examined. From the literature review, many factors and variables were discovered, and the conceptual framework is proposed as the foundation of this study. The conceptual framework will guide the data collection process whereby a qualitative thematic analysis approach will be employed for this study.