Integrating AI with healthcare expertise: Introducing the Health Care Professional-In-The-Loop Framework: Part 1

‘Artificial intelligence (AI) is a tool, the choice
of how it gets deployed is ours.’1
The rapid evolution of AI is reshaping
various industries, with healthcare standing
at the forefront of this transformation.2
AI’s
potential to enhance diagnostic accuracy,
streamline treatment planning, and improve
patient outcomes holds immense promise
in fields like medicine and dentistry.2,3 As
AI systems grow increasingly capable, the
ethical considerations surrounding their
use in clinical practice, particularly in
maintaining patient autonomy and human
oversight, become critical areas of focus.4
In healthcare, where patient-centred care
and individualised decision-making are
paramount, the unrestrained application of
AI may lead to unintended consequences,
risking the replacement of nuanced human
judgment with rigid algorithms.4,5,6
The Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) model,7
widely used in sectors such as finance and
autonomous systems, has traditionally
addressed the critical need for human
oversight. By embedding human intervention within automated processes, HITL ensures
that technology remains a tool guided by
human reasoning.
However, this model requires adaptation
for healthcare, where decisions frequently
demand empathy, contextual understanding,
and clinical expertise beyond what
algorithms can offer. This paper is structured
in two parts. Part 1 introduces the envisioned
Health Care Professional-In-The-Loop (HCPITL) framework, explaining its fundamental
principles and how it adapts the HITL model
to meet the unique challenges of healthcare.
In Part 2, we explore the application of the
HCP-ITL framework across diverse medical
and dental specialties, outlining the potential
roles AI could play within this model to
enhance clinical care while ensuring ethical
and professional oversight.