Public health professionals associated with the Health Promotion and Education Alumni Association of Ibadan College of Medicine (HPEAAICM) have cautioned against the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for self-diagnosis and medication recommendations, emphasizing that such actions could pose significant risks to health.
They noted an increasing trend of individuals turning to the internet for medical advice instead of seeking help from qualified healthcare providers, warning that AI-generated prescriptions or those found online might not account for a patient’s medical history, potentially causing more harm than benefit.
The representatives expressed their views on Tuesday during the opening of a two-day Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference for the HPEAAICM, themed “Artificial Intelligence and Innovations in Public Health” in Ibadan.
Dr. Bright Orji, President of the Association, remarked that while AI is now an integral part of healthcare, its use must be approached with caution, especially for both public health consumers and professionals.
He added that the conference aims to enlighten stakeholders in the public health arena about the various opportunities AI presents concerning public health and safety, as well as how practitioners can utilize these tools for enhanced service delivery, while also drawing attention to the potential challenges involved.
Dr Orji said, “The reason we want to do this is so that everyone is well abreast of what to do. You can observe that even the social media is being misused and abused. So it’s very important that a whole lot of information and of course, there is disinformation in the age that we live in today.
“The emergence of Covid-19 and Ebola taught us great lessons. In fact, during the period of Ebola, people were drinking bags of salt as a way to prevent it. But you can see that that information is abused, it’s not the way it should be. So what we are doing now is to ensure that Artificial intelligence is properly deployed, and also, we should have regulations on how AI should really be used so that people can use it, benefit from it, and use it to improve our society and improve the lives of mankind.
“Many people believe in AI and what we’re saying is the fact that they should use it appropriately. With AI, there are so many things you can do in a second. So this is part of the benefit we want to ensure. With AI, Medical doctors going on ward rounds can be assisted to ensure that their ward round is facilitated, evidence-based, and can improve the lives of their patients.”
The President of the Ibadan College of Medicine Alumni Association (ICOMAA) Worldwide, Professor Emmanuel Otolorin, said although AI comes with many opportunities that can be harnessed, public health consumers and practitioners must also be aware that AI can hallucinate and create what doesn’t exist.
He cautioned that individuals should not see AI as all-knowing and cannot cannot take the place of professional.
Professor Otolorin said”Artificial intelligence comes with a lot of opportunities that can be deployed to improve health care delivery. Yes, it might make the work of healthcare providers easier, but also we have to be very careful in how we deploy the numerous tools that are available on AI platforms.
“There are tools for processes that can be applied in health care delivery, and I think that we’re quite new in the process now, but over time, people are going to be dissecting the different applications that are there and see how they can be deployed, of course, they can also be abused.
“We have to be careful that people don’t begin to use AI in place of health care workers because some AI tools, I would say, hallucinate.
“My son is a computer scientist and he actually showed me how an AI tool created the drug that doesn’t exist and also describes side effects of the drug that actually doesn’t exist. So AI can hallucinate. So you have to be a content expert to know what it’s talking about.
“So if you use an AI tool and you ask it to do something, you have to be knowledgeable enough to know that what it had done is correct and not just adopt it.”
The Nigeria Medical and Dental Council (MDCN) will take stern action against medical practitioners who make errors due to reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
 have cautioned against the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for self-diagnosis and medication recommendations, emphasizing that such actions could pose significant risks to health.){kind=link}