ChatGPT delivers empathy with limited expertise: Study finds
Artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like ChatGPT have been of great interest in the medical field. Researchers from the Qualcomm Institute at the University of California San Diego conducted a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine to analyze ChatGPT's potential in medicine. The research team compared responses from physicians with those from ChatGPT to real-world health questions and found that healthcare professionals preferred ChatGPT’s responses 79% of the time. They also rated ChatGPT’s responses as higher quality and more empathetic. This is promising news for the use of AI in healthcare.
Can ChatGPT relieve physician burnout?
One major advantage of ChatGPT is its potential for integration into health systems to improve physician responses to patient questions and, in turn, help ease the increasing burden on physicians. According to the study's co-author Eric Leas, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated virtual healthcare adoption, leading to record-breaking levels of physician burnout due to a barrage of electronic patient messages seeking medical advice. ChatGPT could be part of the solution to reduce physician burnout and improve patient care.
Challenges to AI-augmented care
Although ChatGPT shows great potential, study co-author Davey Smith cautions that directly answering patient questions accurately and empathetically is a challenge even for AI models. However, with further development and integration with healthcare professionals, ChatGPT and other AI assistants could revolutionize the healthcare industry.
The study's lead author and vice chief of innovation in the UC San Diego School of Medicine Division of Infectious Disease and Global Public Health, John W. Ayers, believes that the opportunities for improving healthcare with AI are massive. AI-augmented care is the future of medicine, and ChatGPT's promising results show that the future may be closer than we think.
