AI diagnostic technologies and the gap in colorectal cancer screening participation

AI augmented clinical diagnostic tools are the latest research focus in colorectal cancer (CRC) detection. While the opportunity presented by AI-enhanced CRC diagnosis is sound, this paper highlights how its effectiveness with respect to reducing CRC-related mortality and enhancing patient outcomes may be limited by the fact that patient participation remains extremely low globally. This paper builds a foundation to consider how human factors tend to contribute to low participation rates and suggests that a more nuanced socio-technical approach to the development, implementation and evaluation of AI systems that is sensitive to the psycho-social and cultural dimension of CRC may lead to tools that increase screening uptake.