For a few days around Christmas, Holly Jespersen, a 50-year-old living in New York, did not feel great. It felt like a cold was coming on, but she wasn\u2019t sure if she should go to the doctor or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go to urgent care, you pay a $75 copay, and they\u2019re like, \u2018it\u2019s viral and there\u2019s nothing we can do for you,\u2019\u201d Jespersen said. So she turned to ChatGPT<\/a>, the AI-powered chatbot from OpenAI, and asked: \u201cShould I go to the doctor or not?\u201d The answer was no.<\/p>\n A few days later, she took a three-hour nap \u2014 an unusual occurrence for her, who described herself as \u201cnot a napper.\u201d Sinus pressure, headaches, fatigue and a high fever followed. She finally went to urgent care, using ChatGPT, to help her decide when it was time to see a doctor. At the medical facility, she was tested for strep, COVID-19 and influenza. The test revealed she had influenza A<\/a>, a type of flu virus.<\/p>\n Jespersen is far from the only one turning to ChatGPT to make health-related decisions. According to OpenAI, more than 40 million people ask ChatGPT a health-related question every day, with some 230 million asking a health-related question per week. From a business perspective, it did not come as a surprise to many that on Jan. 7, the company announced that<\/a> over the coming weeks it would be rolling out ChatGPT Health.<\/p>\n In the announcement, the company stated that consumers will be able to upload their medical records and wellness apps to make the service more useful and customized. ChatGPT Health is meant \u201cto support, not replace,\u201d medical care, and it is not intended for \u201cdiagnosis or treatment,\u201d the company said. Instead, it will help users navigate \u201ceveryday questions\u201d and \u201cunderstand patterns over time\u201d to help people feel prepared and informed<\/p>\n \u201cWhile ChatGPT is more interactive, neither resource is without pitfalls.\u201d<\/p>\n This may sound familiar to those who recall the rollout of the health care information website WebMD, which also promised to empower and inform people about their bodies. It quickly became the most popular source of health information in the United States and paved a way for a new digital era in health information \u2014 giving people a chance to self-diagnose or symptoms check for a health problem \u2014 but also helped introduce terms like \u201ccyberchondria,\u201d<\/a> in which a person engages in excessive online searching for health information, leading to increased anxiety, unfounded distress and misinterpretation of symptoms.<\/p>\n As ChatGPT Health enters the chat, so to speak, many are wondering if it will be a helpful tool in America\u2019s broken health care system or if it will exacerbate long-standing problems about how the digital age is changing access to health information.<\/p>\n \u201cI have often said that ChatGPT is similar to the WebMD Symptom Checker,\u201d family physician Dr. Alexa Mieses Malchuk<\/a> told Salon. \u201cWhile ChatGPT is more interactive, neither resource is without pitfalls.\u201d<\/p>\n A study published in NPJ Digital Medicine<\/a> recently found that this technology, known as large language models, are built to prioritize being helpful over being accurate when it comes to medical information. Indeed, one major concern about ChatGPT Health is that it won\u2019t provide accurate health information.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s great that anyone can access information, but on the flipside, if you don\u2019t have medical training, you don\u2019t know how to sift through that information and figure out what\u2019s important,\u201d Malchuk said. \u201cChatGPT Health will integrate with certain personal health data and make recommendations based on codes and algorithms.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Malchuk emphasized, it cannot replace \u201cthe experience of a medical professional\u201d who is better equipped to understand \u201cthe nuance\u201d of a person\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n The stakes are lower when a person is trying to figure out if they have a cold or the flu. But when it comes to more serious health issues, like cancer, the consequences can be big. A 2023 study found that when ChatGPT was asked to generate treatment plans for various cancers, its plans contained numerous errors<\/a>, including some \u201cdifficult even for experts to detect.\u201d<\/p>\n More recently, the American Society of Clinical Oncology said<\/a> that newer research has shown that ChatGPT\u2019s answers to questions about symptoms, prevention and screening of colon cancer specifically were \u201chighly accurate and reliable by a review panel of expert oncologists.\u201d This suggests that LLMs could be useful in answering patients\u2019 questions, but not in creating diagnoses or treatment plans.<\/p>\n Malchuk emphasized to Salon that prompts \u2014 the commands or requests sent to chatbots \u2014 matter, too.<\/p>\n \u201cChatGPT is also limited based on the prompts that you provide,\u201d Malchuk said. \u201cAgain, without any medical knowledge, you might not be asking the right questions of ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n