Pew’s healthcare AI survey separates human review from autonomous use

Pew Research Center’s October 29 report presents U.S. adult views collected June 22–28. These task questions went to 1,751 respondents in Form 1, within the 3,488‑person survey.

The distinction is in the question itself: being open to AI when a human makes a final review is different from being open to AI acting without that review. Combining those answers into a single measure of openness can conceal the condition respondents chose.

For someone reading a claim about public support, the practical question is therefore what the proposed system is allowed to do. Does it prepare material for another person to examine, or can its output directly become the decision? A survey answer tied to one arrangement cannot simply be carried over to the other.

Values are percentages from the [published topline, page 4](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp‑content/uploads/sites/20/2026/10/PS_2026.10.29_AI‑healthcare_impact_topline.pdf). Less than 1% gave no answer; published rounding is retained. Booking here means scheduling a medical appointment. On narrow screens, scroll the table horizontally to see all response columns. | Task | Without human review | With final human review | Not open | Not sure | No answer | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Booking | 29 | 44 | 18 | 8 | <1 | | Diagnosis | 3 | 47 | 41 | 9 | <1 | | Health insurance claim decision | 5 | 38 | 46 | 11 | <1 | Selected and reformatted from [Americans Are Open to AI in Healthcare, but Want Humans Making Final Calls](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/10/29/americans-are-open-to-ai-in-healthcare-but-want-humans-making-final-calls/), Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C., October 29, 2026. © 2026 Pew Research Center. Selection and interpretation: OpenTools Team. This selection keeps the two forms of openness separate and retains uncertainty and nonresponse. The rows concern different tasks from the same question battery; they are not a ranking of products, a test of clinical performance or a measurement of actual AI use. The distinction also helps frame a concrete follow-up question. When a provider describes human review, what is the person expected to inspect and which decision remains theirs? The table does not show whether any particular review process would work. It shows why leaving the review condition out changes what the response describes.

The [methods](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/10/29/ai‑in‑healthcare‑methodology/) describe weighted panel data collected online and by telephone in English and Spanish. The sample size for the task battery needs to travel with its results. The full‑survey sample should not replace the smaller Form 1 denominator when describing these answers. This article makes no small‑gap significance claim and does not apply a full‑sample error margin to the task subsample. These are reported views of possible healthcare uses. They do not establish that an AI system improves outcomes, makes safe decisions or has been adopted by the people surveyed. Those questions require evidence about systems and real practice, rather than an opinion distribution. OpenTools selected three tasks to explain the response conditions, checked them against the retained questionnaire and topline, and preserved the published categories. It did not run a clinical test, access respondent‑level records or compare demographic groups or earlier survey waves. Healthcare‑context photograph dated September 20, 2026. It does not depict a Pew respondent, an AI review process or a clinical test. Photo: [Nenad Stojković (Shixart1985) / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doctor_working_in_her_office_while_using_a_computer_and_taking_notes_during_a_consultation_with_a_patient.jpg), [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Downsampled and cropped for display.