Healthcare students’ knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives toward artificial intelligence in the southern Vietnam

The application of new technologies in medical education still lags behind the extraordinary advances of AI. This study examined the understanding, attitudes, and perspectives of Vietnamese medical students toward AI and its consequences, as well as their knowledge of existing AI operations in Vietnam. A cross-sectional online survey was administered to 1142 students enrolled in undergraduate medicine and pharmacy programs. Most of the participants had no understanding of AI in healthcare (1053 or 92.2 %). The majority believed that AI would benefit their careers (890 or 77.9 %) and that such innovation will be used to oversee public health and epidemic prevention on their behalf (882 or 77.2 %). The proportion of students with satisfactory knowledge significantly differed depending on gender (P < 0.001), major (P = 0.003), experience (P < 0.001), and income (P = 0.011). The percentage of respondents with positive attitudes significantly differed by year level (P = 0.008) and income (P = 0.003), and the proportion with favorable perspectives regarding AI varied considerably by age (P = 0.046) and major (P < 0.001). Most of the participants wanted to integrate AI into radiology and digital imaging training (P = 0.283), while the fifth-year students wished to learn about AI in medical genetics and genomics (P < 0.001, 4.0 ± 0.8). The male students had 1.898 times more adequate knowledge of AI than their female counterparts, and those who had attended webinars/lectures/courses on AI in healthcare had 4.864 times more adequate knowledge than those having no such experiences. The majority believed that the barrier to implementing AI in healthcare is the lack of financial resources (83.54 %) and appropriate training (81.00 %). Participants saw AI as a "partner" rather than a "competitor", but the majority of low knowledge was recorded. Future research should take into account the way to integrate AI into medical training programs for healthcare students.