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Review
. 2019 Feb 1;8(2):168.
doi: 10.3390/jcm8020168.

Artificial Intelligence vs. Natural Stupidity: Evaluating AI readiness for the Vietnamese Medical Information System

Quan-Hoang Vuong  1   2 , Manh-Tung Ho  3   4 , Thu-Trang Vuong  5 , Viet-Phuong La  6   7 , Manh-Toan Ho  8   9 , Kien-Cuong P Nghiem  10 , Bach Xuan Tran  11   12 , Hai-Ha Giang  13 , Thu-Vu Giang  14 , Carl Latkin  15 , Hong-Kong T Nguyen  16 , Cyrus S H Ho  17 , Roger C M Ho  18
Affiliations
Review

Artificial Intelligence vs. Natural Stupidity: Evaluating AI readiness for the Vietnamese Medical Information System

Quan-Hoang Vuong et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

This review paper presents a framework to evaluate the artificial intelligence (AI) readiness for the healthcare sector in developing countries: a combination of adequate technical or technological expertise, financial sustainability, and socio-political commitment embedded in a healthy psycho-cultural context could bring about the smooth transitioning toward an AI-powered healthcare sector. Taking the Vietnamese healthcare sector as a case study, this paper attempts to clarify the negative and positive influencers. With only about 1500 publications about AI from 1998 to 2017 according to the latest Elsevier AI report, Vietnamese physicians are still capable of applying the state-of-the-art AI techniques in their research. However, a deeper look at the funding sources suggests a lack of socio-political commitment, hence the financial sustainability, to advance the field. The AI readiness in Vietnam's healthcare also suffers from the unprepared information infrastructure-using text mining for the official annual reports from 2012 to 2016 of the Ministry of Health, the paper found that the frequency of the word "database" actually decreases from 2012 to 2016, and the word has a high probability to accompany words such as "lacking", "standardizing", "inefficient", and "inaccurate." Finally, manifestations of psycho-cultural elements such as the public's mistaken views on AI or the non-transparent, inflexible and redundant of Vietnamese organizational structures can impede the transition to an AI-powered healthcare sector.

Keywords: AI applications; AI in healthcare; AI in medicine: AI readiness; Vietnam; artificial intelligence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A visualization of the relationship between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita (x-axis; unit: USD) and total publications on AI in the 1998–2017 period (y-axis; unit: publications); data from 18 countries across the economic spectrum were retrieved. Source: Elsevier [39].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Four considerations for successful applications of artificial intelligence in medicine (AIM).
Figure 3
Figure 3
The top ten frequently used words (x-axis) in the Vietnamese Ministry of Health’s Joint Annual Health Report 2012 (y-axis: number of appearances). The results were obtained from the text mining of the ministry’s reports in R software (version 3.4.1).
Figure 4
Figure 4
The frequencies of five keywords relevant to AI (x-axis) in Vietnam’s Ministry of Health’s annual reports from 2012–2016 (y-axis: number of appearances). The results were obtained from the text mining of the ministry’s reports in R software (version 3.4.1).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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