Economic Evaluations and Equity in the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Imaging Examinations for Medical Diagnosis in People With Dermatological, Neurological, and Pulmonary Diseases: Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Health care systems around the world face numerous challenges. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have offered promising solutions, particularly in diagnostic imaging. Objective: This systematic review focused on evaluating the economic feasibility of AI in real-world diagnostic imaging scenarios, specifically for dermatological, neurological, and pulmonary diseases. The central question was whether the use of AI in these diagnostic assessments improves economic outcomes and promotes equity in health care systems. Methods: This systematic review has 2 main components, economic evaluation and equity assessment. We used the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) tool to ensure adherence to best practices in systematic reviews. The protocol was registered with PROSPERO (International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews), and we followed the PRISMA-E (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses - Equity Extension) guidelines for equity. Scientific articles reporting on economic evaluations or equity considerations related to the use of AI-based tools in diagnostic imaging in dermatology, neurology, or pulmonology were included in the study. The search was conducted in the PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. Methodological quality was assessed using the following checklists, CHEC (Consensus on Health Economic Criteria) for economic evaluations, EPHPP (Effective Public Health Practice Project) for equity evaluation studies, and Welte for transferability. Results: The systematic review identified 9 publications within the scope of the research question, with sample sizes ranging from 122 to over 1.3 million participants. The majority of studies addressed economic evaluation (88.9%), with most studies addressing pulmonary diseases (n=6; 66.6%), followed by neurological diseases (n=2; 22.3%), and only 1 (11.1%) study addressing dermatological diseases. These studies had an average quality access of 87.5% on the CHEC checklist. Only 2 studies were found to be transferable to Brazil and other countries with a similar health context. The economic evaluation revealed that 87.5% of studies highlighted the benefits of using AI in dermatology, neurology, and pulmonology, highlighting significant cost-effectiveness outcomes, with the most advantageous being a negative cost-effectiveness ratio of -US $27,580 per QALY (quality-adjusted life year) for melanoma diagnosis, indicating substantial cost savings in this scenario. The only study assessing equity, based on 129,819 radiographic images, identified AI-assisted underdiagnosis, particularly in certain subgroups defined by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Conclusions: This review underscores the importance of transparency in the description of AI tools and the representativeness of population subgroups to mitigate health disparities. As AI is rapidly being integrated into health care, detailed assessments are essential to ensure that benefits reach all patients, regardless of sociodemographic factors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.048 | 0.211 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.013 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".