AI literacy: The missing link in digital health tech

The need for shared AI literacy across healthcare professionals, consumers, and patients

Digital health tech organizations are increasingly recognizing that AI literacy in healthcare must be built simultaneously across three groups:

• Clinicians and care teams: Must integrate AI into shared decision-making without compromising judgment.
• Patients and healthcare consumers: Must feel confident that AI enhances — not replaces — care. According to a recent survey by CHAI, 93% of consumers had at least one concern about use of AI in healthcare, and more than 50% said it makes them trust healthcare less.
• Digital health tech organizations and health system administrators: Must balance empowering clinical teams with security concerns, like compliance, governance, and accountability. The average cost of an AI-related security breach in healthcare in 2025 was over $7.4 million.

Without shared AI literacy across all three stakeholder groups, even well-governed AI systems can fail at the point of use.

In a recent Becker’s Healthcare discussion featuring leaders from Cleveland Clinic, Seattle Children’s, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Nuvance Health, and UChicago Medicine, a shared challenge came into focus: AI adoption is outpacing AI literacy. Rather than treating this as a compliance issue alone, these organizations are reframing it as a usability, transparency, and education gap — one that digital health technology must help close.

From this discussion, three key points emerged for developers to consider:

• Users will seek out general AI tools when existing solutions fall short: Despite the availability of enterprise-sanctioned tools, clinicians and staff are turning to shadow AI to meet immediate needs, signaling unmet demand and creating both risk and opportunity.
• AI outputs can directly influence care decisions, for better or worse: Without clear context, validation, and guardrails, AI can shape decisions in ways users may not fully understand, particularly at the point of care. Sustainable governance depends on enabling — not restricting — responsible use.
• Leading organizations are looking to guide safe adoption rather than attempting to control it: They are doing this by pairing oversight with education, transparency, and cross-functional collaboration.

For digital health companies, these signals reinforce a clear shift: AI literacy is not just a training challenge — it is a design challenge.