{"id":619272,"date":"2026-04-21T17:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/619272\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:35:09","slug":"5-ways-your-doctor-may-be-using-ai-chatbots-and-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/619272\/","title":{"rendered":"5 ways your doctor may be using AI chatbots \u2014 and why it matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Millions of Americans are turning to<\/a> AI chatbots for health answers. Doctors are, too.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the ways doctors are incorporating AI chatbots into their practice are surprising.\n <\/p>\n

\n Specialized medical AI chatbots have quickly become a go-to source for many doctors and trainees. The CEO of one of these medical chatbot companies recently claimed<\/a> that more than 100 million Americans were treated by a doctor who used their platform last year.\n <\/p>\n

\n Popular chatbots like OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT don\u2019t meet the bar for doctors, who say these platforms aren\u2019t always accurate or up to date with the latest guidance. OpenAI\u2019s usage policies state<\/a> that users are not allowed to use its services for \u201ctailored advice\u201d without consulting a licensed health professional.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cChatGPT is like your crazy uncle,\u201d said Dr. Ida Sim, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies how to use data and technology to improve health care.\n <\/p>\n

\n The edge, Sim says, is that medical chatbots are less prone to sycophancy and more likely to ground answers in peer-reviewed research and clinical guidelines. That\u2019s why she says the uptake has been \u201ctremendous.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Millions of research papers are published<\/a> every year \u2014 and keeping up with them all is impossible.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou\u2019d need like 18 hours a day to stay up to date,\u201d said Dr. Jared Dashevsky, a resident physician at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.\n <\/p>\n

\n But doctors are expected to stay current on new research and guidelines to maintain their licenses. Many say they now use medical chatbots as a reference tool to help them stay updated.\n <\/p>\n

\n Rather than pulling information from the entire internet, specialized medical chatbots actively search medical literature, says Dr. Jonathan H. Chen, an associate professor at Stanford Medicine who leads his health system\u2019s efforts to integrate AI into medical education.\n <\/p>\n

\n That workflow provides doctors with more accurate answers that summarize and link to important papers and guidelines. Dashevsky, who writes<\/a> about AI, says these features are especially helpful for trainees working long hours.\n <\/p>\n

\n Some health systems have adopted<\/a> AI chatbots to improve patient care, promising doctors safety and privacy protections.\n <\/p>\n

\n But many doctors use unauthorized chatbots called shadow AIs, according to doctors CNN spoke with. Some of these shadow AIs also advertise HIPAA compliance features.\n <\/p>\n

\n HIPAA is a federal law that requires<\/a> certain organizations that maintain identifiable health information \u2014 such as hospitals and insurers \u2014 to protect it from being disclosed without patient consent.\n <\/p>\n

\n But language used by shadow AIs has led some doctors to believe that it\u2019s safe to upload protected health information onto chatbots in exchange for more tailored answers. But Iliana Peters, a health care lawyer at the law firm Polsinelli who previously led HIPAA enforcement for the US Department of Health and Human Services, says that assumption is inaccurate.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201c\u2018HIPAA compliance\u2019 is not an accurate term to use by any company,\u201d Peters said, explaining that the phrase should be used only by government regulators.\n <\/p>\n

\n Despite that, Dr. Carolyn Kaufman \u2014 a resident physician at Stanford Medicine \u2014 and other doctors say that patient information is making its way into unauthorized chatbots, potentially opening the door to new ways of commodifying patient data.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cData is money,\u201d Kaufman said, noting that she has never uploaded HIPAA-protected information onto an unapproved chatbot. \u201cIf we\u2019re just freely uploading those data into certain websites, then that\u2019s obviously a risk for the individual patient and for the institution, as well.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n AI chatbots have also stepped in to help doctors draft summaries of patient visits and long hospital stays. These notes are viewable on online patient portals and help doctors track a patient\u2019s course and communicate plans across the care team.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s probably safer to have artificial intelligence review a hospital course and know everything happened, versus you as a human \u2014 with limited time, jumping between note to note \u2014 trying to put the pieces together,\u201d Dashevsky said, arguing that although concerns over AI accuracy are valid, human-based summaries may also miss key details.\n <\/p>\n

\n Administrative work can take up<\/a> nearly nine hours a week for the average doctor, and the time doctors spend on insurance-related tasks costs an estimated<\/a> $26.7 billion each year.\n <\/p>\n

\n A feature that Dashevsky says has been a \u201cgame-changer\u201d is chatbot-authored letters to insurance companies for prior authorizations and other correspondence, allowing him to field patient requests more quickly.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI would have to figure out who this patient is, write the letter myself and review it. It took so much time,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, AI will produce for you a really good letter.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n When patients come to doctors with concerns, physicians have to figure out how to help them. Part of that process is considering a range of possible diagnoses. Many medical students and trainees use AI chatbots to help build that list, and some doctors beyond training use the feature, too.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cFrom a med student perspective \u2026 you\u2019re seeing a lot of things for the first time,\u201d said Evan Patel, a fourth-year medical student at Rush University Medical College. \u201cAI chatbots sort of help orient me to what possibilities it could be.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Kaufman says the bots provide the most accurate list when she includes every data point linked to patients, like lab results and imaging findings.\n <\/p>\n

\n All eight doctors and trainees CNN spoke with say they regularly use medical AI chatbots. And most have a positive outlook, viewing these tools as a way to offload certain cognitive and administrative tasks. But patient privacy concerns are valid, the doctors say.\n <\/p>\n

Five questions to ask your doctor<\/p>\n

How are you using AI chatbots to augment my care?
\n What types of AI chatbots do you use, and have they been approved by the health system?
\n Is any of my personal health information being entered into AI tools, and how is it protected?
\n How do you check that the information from AI chatbots is accurate?
\n Do you usually agree with the information from AI chatbots, or do you find yourself questioning it?<\/p>\n

\n As with any AI tool, Kaufman says, errors happen and information can be inaccurate. When she consults peers for second opinions, she says, they \u201calmost never agree\u201d with the AI chatbot\u2019s answer.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cPeople treat AI like it\u2019s magic,\u201d Chen said. \u201cIt\u2019s not magic. It can\u2019t just do anything you want.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n He added: \u201cYou ask the same question 10 times, and it\u2019ll give you 10 different answers.\u201d That variability, Chen argues, highlights some of the surface-level limitations.\n <\/p>\n

\n Medicine operates on three layers, Sims says: workflows, knowledge and expertise. AI is transforming the first two. But that last layer \u2014 core to the care patients receive \u2014 is harder to replicate and may be what matters most.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf we just apply guidelines, then replace us,\u201d Sim said. \u201cIt\u2019s where you take the knowledge and apply it to an evolving set of conditions in the context of your life. That\u2019s what medicine is. It\u2019s in the context of people\u2019s lives. And these machines don\u2019t do that.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions of Americans are turning to AI chatbots for health answers. Doctors are, too. But the ways doctors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-619272","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\/619272","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=619272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}