With many Americans turning to large language models for health advice, health systems around the country are eyeing and even rolling out their own branded chatbots in an attempt to harness this already popular tool and steer more people to their services. But the burgeoning trend is raising immediate questions and concerns for the country\u2019s complicated and generally underperforming health care system.<\/p>\n
Executives frame the new offerings as a convenience for patients, meeting people where they are and providing a service with digital equity. They also suggest their chatbots will be a safer alternative to commercial versions people are using now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are at an inflection point in healthcare,\u201d Allon Bloch, CEO of clinical AI company K Health, said in a statement. \u201cDemand is accelerating, and patients are already using AI to navigate their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
K Health is working with partner Hartford HealthCare, in Connecticut, to roll out its PatientGPT<\/a> chatbot to tens of thousands of its existing patients.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question isn\u2019t whether AI will shape healthcare, it\u2019s about how we do it in a safe, transparent way, inside a health system that connects to your medical records and your care team. PatientGPT represents that turning point,\u201d Bloch said.<\/p>\n But some experts are wary of the rollouts, raising concerns about whether chatbots are ready for such branded debuts, if there will be sufficient monitoring, what liability will look like, and also whether or not this is the answer to the care problems patients are really raising.<\/p>\n While these risks and questions swirl, the benefits to patients are still only hypothetical. \u201cIt\u2019s a tempting idea,\u201d Adam Rodman, a clinical reasoning researcher and internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told Stat News recently<\/a>. But there isn\u2019t yet evidence to show that integrating chatbots into health systems improves patient outcomes. \u201cWe\u2019re not there yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With many Americans turning to large language models for health advice, health systems around the country are eyeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-604490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}