While AI will not replace face-to-face contact with a doctor, a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that doctors working with technologies like ChatGPT could revolutionize medicine.

A study by the Qualcomm Institute at the University of California, San Diego compared doctors’ written responses and ChatGPT responses to real health questions asked on the Reddit AskDocs forum. A panel of certified healthcare professionals preferred ChatGPT responses 79% of the time, scoring them based on information quality and empathy.

Good or very good quality responses were 3.6 times higher for ChatGPT than physicians, and sympathetic responses were 9.8 times higher for ChatGPT than physicians.

“The opportunities to improve healthcare with AI are enormous,” says lead researcher John Ayers, associate chief of innovation in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. He adds that “AI-based care is the future of medicine.”

“While the study pitted ChatGPT against doctors, the final decision is not to kick the doctor,” said Adam Poliak, assistant professor of computer science at Bryn Marr College in Pennsylvania and one of the study’s authors. “Instead, a doctor using ChatGPT is the answer to better compassionate care.”

Eric Lees, co-author of the study and assistant professor at the UC San Diego School of Public Health and Human Longevity, describes that “the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of virtual healthcare. While this has made it easier for patients to access care, doctors are burdened by a flood of emails from patients seeking care, which has led to record levels of medical burnout.”

“We could use these technologies to train physicians to communicate with the patient, bridge the health disparities faced by minorities who often seek medical care via text messages, create new health security systems, and help physicians by providing better and more effective help. adds Mark Drenze, assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University and one of the authors of the study.

Source: RES-IPE