ChatGPT: Your Next Doctor?

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Health is one of the most important aspects of human life, which makes healthcare one of the largest and most crucial industries. However, the necessity of healthcare services often places consumers at the mercy of providers and insurance companies especially in the American healthcare system. The Internet has become an empowering medical resource for individuals as according to the Pew Research Center, 81% of Americans use it to research medical information. However, there are still significant barriers between patients and their diagnoses and treatments.

Patient diagnosis is one aspect of healthcare in need of innovation since many people currently experience either delayed or incorrect diagnoses with healthcare providers unable to always recognize signs and symptoms of a condition in a timely manner. Additionally, diagnosing a patient can be especially tricky if the patient has limited access to diagnostic tests or if they live in a remote location. Even if patients live in a Metropolitan area, scheduling an in-person doctor visit is often challenging due to the limited availability of appointments. Speaking from personal experience, recently, I had been dealing with an urgent skin condition and needed to schedule a dermatologist or allergen doctor consultation; however, all the doctors within a 10-mile radius were booked out for the next four months. As a result, the onus was on me to find short-term and long-term solutions for my symptoms.

More than ever, healthcare patients are beginning to take matters into their own hands and the rise of ChatGPT could potentially signal a new era of healthcare.

Since it can take in symptom information, patient medical history, and other relevant factors to provide personalized assessments and treatments, ChatGPT can theoretically replace the need for most doctor consultations. If this AI-driven chatbot can emerge as an effective alternative to in-person doctor consultations, this would save patients a significant amount of time and money. Instead of spending thousands of dollars annually on doctor visits or paying high insurance premiums, patients could instead call upon the services of ChatGPT as a personal doctor whenever and wherever they are. ChatGPT’s potential as a doctor alternative is clear, but our team wanted to test whether the chatbot’s current ability matches its…