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ChatGPT's AI Use Case: Digital Health

Jan



The end of 2022 has seen a lot of news articles regarding sophisticated artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT, which can answer complex questions with lifelike insight. As the utilization of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots continues to be explored in various specialties, such as the digital health industry, the evolution of more in-depth responses will continue to see significant improvements over the next year. For the past few weeks, I’ve been asking ChatGPT to answer a few questions about digital health technologies and clinical applications.  

Medicine is a humane endeavor where language enables key interactions for and between clinicians, researchers, and patients. Digital health tools that facilitate innovative methods and modalities to improve care, enable lifestyle change, and create efficiencies are progressing quickly. As healthcare organizations seek more customized, data-driven patient care, adopting technologies to promote digital engagement, data management, and workflow optimization is vital. 

This article serves as a 2022 archive for some of the questions we want to continue asking ChatGPT over the foreseeable future and see the evolution of responses. Others in the digital health space have also curated replies they’ve received, so it will be interesting to see the evolution of the tool over time. 

ChatGPT was created by OpenAI and launched in November 2022 as a tool to interact conversationally. Per the ChatGPT website, the dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow instructions in a prompt and provide a detailed response. OpenAI also states that the use of the tool, for now, is to help gather feedback on its strengths and weaknesses. During the research preview, usage of ChatGPT is free. As of December 2022, there’s no timeline for how long this tool will remain free. 

Due to the maximum number of words in this article, to read the questions and responses from ChatGPT, click this link

Research Using AI Algorithms

The use of AI algorithms goes beyond chatbot programs such as ChatGPT. Medicine is a humane endeavor where language enables key interactions for and between clinicians, researchers, and patients. Yet, today’s AI models for applications in medicine and healthcare have largely failed to fully utilize language. Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive natural language understanding and generation capabilities, but the quality bar for medical and clinical applications is high.

One use case researchers at Drexel University are exploring is whether one day we might be able to help doctors detect Alzheimer’s Disease in its early stages. In a broader use case, Google introduced a ChatGPT-like chatbot for healthcare called MultiMedQA. AIM (Analytics India Magazine) and other news outlets report that MultiMedQA combines HealthSearchQA, a new free-response dataset of medical questions sought online, with six existing open-question answering datasets covering professional medical exams, research, and consumer queries.

Google isn’t the first tech behemoth to venture into the AI-driven healthcare solution. Microsoft also works closely with OpenAI to employ GPT-3 to facilitate collaboration between employees and clinicians and improve the efficiency of healthcare teams. For Google, researchers find that their study demonstrated the potential of LLMs for encoding medical knowledge and, in particular, for question answering. However, it had several limitations, which they outlined along with directions for future research.

AI's Role in Healthcare and a Path Forward

As healthcare organizations seek more customized, data-driven patient care, adopting technologies to promote digital engagement, data management, and workflow optimization is vital. AI and related technologies are increasingly common in business and society and are beginning to be applied to healthcare. These technologies can transform many patient care characteristics and administrative processes within hospital, payers, and pharmaceutical organizations. Could the AI behind ChatGPT help change the way health care is delivered? Maybe. Maybe not.

AI is the technology that could have the greatest impact on healthcare services. The complexity and rise of data in healthcare mean that AI will increasingly be applied within the field. AI is currently applied in a wide range of healthcare use cases, with some early AI adopters in the medical world already seeing a major impact. Ultimately using AI to create intelligent processes and workflows could make healthcare cheaper, more effective, more personalized, and more equitable.

 

By Logan Harper, MS

Keywords: Emerging Technology, Innovation, HealthTech

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