Health minister Fleur Agema is pinning her hopes on artificial intelligence to help solve the pressure of work and staff shortages in healthcare.

Agema said on social media this week that AI will lead to a “revolution” in healthcare and that she would do “all I can” to make sure this happens.

She made the comments after visiting the Elisabeth-TweeSteden hospital in Tilburg, which she described as a “leading player” in the use of AI in healthcare, particularly in administrative tasks.

Earlier this week Agema told the Telegraaf that bringing in people from abroad to make up the shortfall in healthcare workers was no longer an option, referring to the new government’s pledge to bring in tough new immigration rules.

“We will have to do it with the people that we have,” she said.

Acknowledging there are also significant concerns among critics about the use of AI when dealing with sensitive patient information, the minister said she is optimistic.

“There are funds available for digitisation,” she said. “The money is running out, but there is lots of funding available for this.”

The Dutch privacy watchdog Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens has recently issued a warning about the use of AI-driven chatbots by companies, following several leaks of private information, including medical details.

Workers who use digital assistants such as ChatGPT to answer questions from customers or summarise large files, may save time, but they also pose a risk to data protection, the AP said.

In one case, a family doctor’s assistant fed private information about patients into a ChatGPT-based programme, which was then stored on the tech company’s servers and potentially used to train the software, the AP said.

People must be able to trust their medical information is safe, spokeswoman Karin told broadcaster NOS. “But once that information is in the system, you no longer have control of it.”