Pave the way of AI emergency care with trust

Emergency departments (EDs) worldwide are facing increasing patient loads, staffing challenges, and heightened demands for efficiency and safety. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a promising solution to these pressures. Our research explores the perspectives of emergency healthcare providers regarding AI, focusing on their confidence and trust in AI-enhanced care and preferred AI applications. At 2025’s SEMS (Society for Emergency Medicine in Singapore) Scientific Meeting held at Ng Teng Fong Centre for Healthcare Innovation, a survey was conducted among 447 attendees about their confidence in AI enhanced care from a patient’s perspective and their openness to using different AI applications in the ED, including medical imaging, clinical decision support, predictive analytics and others. Of 118 respondents, the majority reported only slight(n=59) or no(n=8) confidence in AI-enhanced care as patients, with very few expressing high confidence levels. When asked about preferred AI applications, the top two selected categories were medical imaging and diagnostics(n=79), and clinical decision support systems(n=56). Other applications such as predictive analytics, robotic process automation, and AI in surgical procedures received less interest. While emergency care providers recognize the potential of AI, many remain cautious with limited confidence in its use. Their preferences suggest a greater openness to AI tools that directly enhance existing diagnostic and clinical decision-making tasks, which aligns with the current landscape of AI development in emergency medicine. Bridging the gap between technological capability and human confidence will require continuous engagement between developers, clinicians and patients; achieving greater trust to pave the way of AI emergency care.