Will ChatGPT be your next personal doctor?

As ChatGPT take over many of the mundane tasks from office workers, is it possible for it to diagnose patients and prescribe medicines and other medical procedures that are tailored to the users’ specific condition?

According to a new study by Dutch researchers at the Jeroen Bosch Hospital, ChatGPT was able to diagnose patients who were rushed to the emergency as well as doctors and in some cases the AI chatbot outperformed them. The researchers concluded that the technology could prove to be revolutionary for the field of medicine.

The study also said that the finding does not mean that doctors were obsolete. Rather, it said that AI could help speed up the diagnosis process. It said that the technology could not replace the judgment and experience of doctors but it was rather a helpful aid for medical practitioners.

The research took 30 cases treated in an emergency service in the Netherlands in 2022 and patient history, lab tests and observations were then fed anonymously to ChatGPT. The chatbot was asked to provide as many as five possible diagnoses.

The results were then compared to ER doctors’ observations and later the data was cross-checked with the correct diagnosis for each case. Human doctors scored 87 percent, whereas ChatGPT got a score of 97 percent for version 3.5 and 87 percent for version 4.

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They researchers found that there was an overlap of around 60 percent between the diagnoses from doctors and the chatbot. The researchers also clarified that the diagnosis was not used for treatment but was a pilot to test the potential of the technology.

The researchers concluded that the findings showed that ChatGPT performed as good as the human doctors. The researcher said that the results did not mean that the chatbot was a replacement but it could be helpful in diagnosis and speeding up the process of treatment.