Misinformation, AI Threaten Trust in Australia’s Healthcare System

Public trust in healthcare professionals continues to decline in both Australia and the United States, creating new challenges for doctors who now face patients armed with information from social media, AI, and other non-traditional sources. This concerning trend was a central focus at the Australian Ethical Health Alliance (AEHA) symposium held in May 2025, where experts gathered to address the growing problem of health misinformation.

The symposium highlighted how trust has always functioned as the “ethical currency” of medicine, but this currency is being rapidly depleted. When trust diminishes, everything from vaccination programs to screening initiatives and shared decision-making becomes more difficult to implement.

Professor Michael Kidd, speaking at the symposium, noted that what’s changed isn’t just the volume of poor information circulating but how people form health beliefs in today’s digital environment. General practitioners increasingly encounter patients who arrive with WhatsApp screenshots, AI-generated health summaries, and TikTok anecdotes, expecting these sources to carry equal weight to established medical guidelines and clinical expertise.

“When clinicians push back, the encounter can quickly become adversarial in this age of the infodemic,” noted symposium participants, referring to the World Health Organization’s term for the overwhelming flood of information—both accurate and inaccurate—that makes it difficult for people to find trustworthy guidance.

One scenario discussed at the symposium involved parents requesting immunization exemptions based on AI-curated claims about adverse events. This creates a difficult ethical dilemma for doctors who must balance public health obligations with maintaining therapeutic relationships. Simply dismissing patient concerns as wrong, while ethically correct, often proves ineffective in practice.

The symposium connected misinformation to “epistemic injustice,” where certain populations—particularly First Nations people and culturally diverse communities—are less likely to be believed by healthcare systems. These same groups are often targeted by online misinformation, creating a compounded problem that a simple “trust me, I’m the expert” approach fails to address.

Experts suggested moving from an information hierarchy model to an information partnership: “Let’s look at your source and mine together,” rather than “I tell, you listen.”

Artificial intelligence emerged as a double-edged sword in the discussion. Professor Chris Bain noted that digital tools introduced without strong clinical oversight can “contribute to misinformation…especially when divorced from expert health input.” However, symposium participants emphasized that rejecting AI isn’t the answer—governing it properly is.

Clinical stewardship of AI systems, including setting clear rules, requiring diverse training data, and implementing strong technical governance was proposed. Australian health services already conduct privacy impact assessments and maintain cyber risk registers; they now need parallel processes for AI-assisted content and patient-facing tools, with direct links to clinical governance structures.

The symposium confronted the reality that evidence alone often fails to change behavior. One example discussed was the lack of expected increases in MMR vaccine uptake following measles-related child deaths overseas. “The reality is the community often knows the facts, yet they don’t trust the source,” noted participants, who advocated for greater use of trusted community leaders and narrative approaches in primary care.

Nina Roxburgh emphasized the need to move from institutional credibility to shared credibility with patients, particularly those with lived experience. In practice, this means implementing trauma-informed communication, offering interpreters, co-designing materials with affected communities, and documenting respectfully—even when patient sources seem limited or inaccurate.

The AEHA symposium concluded with pragmatic recommendations for busy clinicians: name misinformation explicitly but without ridicule; review sources collaboratively with patients; use consistent, organization-backed messages; escalate recurring misinformation to leadership; and advocate for proper clinical governance of AI and digital tools within healthcare services.

Perhaps most importantly, the symposium emphasized that trust is now “performative”—healthcare professionals must actively demonstrate transparency, acknowledge uncertainty, and show patients how they reach decisions. Without this approach, the information vacuum will quickly be filled by AI-generated content offering illusory certainty.