Massachusetts hospitals, doctors, and medical groups are piloting ChatGPT technology to potentially reshape the medical landscape. Large language models, such as ChatGPT, are AI-powered platforms that use powerful analytics to generate human-like text. Although there have been concerns raised about the potential threats the technology poses, healthcare professionals view the platform as a useful tool to streamline administrative tasks and potentially improve patient care. Hospitals, such as Boston Children’s Hospital, are already exploring how to use artificial intelligence to manage licensing requirements for providers or to cull resumes of job candidates. Patient privacy, consent, and bias remain concerns; however, experts are already considering guardrails for large language models. The medical professionals are taking the time to thoughtfully and carefully introduce the tools to patient care to ensure optimal results. Medical school education has already begun integrating the technology as a brainstorming tool for medical school essays, and healthcare professionals are expressing significant interest in using AI in the future. Patients have already started turning to AI to diagnose problems and follow its advice.
ChatGPT is a form of new AI technology that provides deep and accurate responses to queries. It has called its own role in the future of medicine a groundbreaking development poised to reshape the medical landscape. Medical companies, hospitals, and doctors are experimenting with different facets of its application that could lead to this becoming a pivotal moment in medicine.
Dr. Isaac Kohane is a professor of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School and editor-in-chief of a new AI journal. He wants to see hospitals use the technology to alleviate administrative burdens and free up physicians to spend more time with patients, thereby improving patient care. However, the wrong goals for the technology could be problematic, squeezing ever more patient visits to every provider, or forcing physicians to edit and audit robot-produced work. Patients might also be confronted with an empathetic robot when reaching out with questions or concerns, further fracturing the relationship between patients and their physicians.
