“We’ll have to see how it works”: An interview study to understand collaborative practices in interdisciplinary artificial intelligence and healthcare research

Developing artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for healthcare is a collaborative effort, bringing data scientists, clinicians, patients and other stakeholders together. By understanding AI as ‘sociotechnical’ where the social and the technical nature of the work and the models are inseparable, we explore the AI development workflow and how stakeholders navigate the challenges and tensions of sharing and generating knowledge across disciplines. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews with participants in early stages of AI-in-healthcare research consortia in the UK. Our findings identify that participants needed to adapt both the tools used for sharing and the information communicated according to their audience, particularly when working with those with a clinical or patient perspective. We identify the novelty of participating in AI research, how AI knowledge is shared, and the inclusion of clinician and patient stakeholder perspectives as key areas within collaborative AI practices in healthcare. These findings highlight that bringing AI into the mix can introduce new obstacles to interdisciplinary work.