Berlin Whether it’s an eye infection or a pain in the shoulder – the artificial intelligence ChatGPT knows an answer to all questions, including medical ones. The chatbot writes texts and converses with users in a form that can hardly be distinguished from a human utterance.
This also opens up enormous possibilities for patients and in medicine – for example in documentation in doctor’s offices, as a daily advisor or in diagnosis. ChatGPT from the US start-up OpenAI can already explain the causes of an illness and recommend treatment or even medication.
True, specialized programs in this area are nothing new. Some of them even come from Germany, such as the symptom checker Ada Health. However, they are specialized in the health sector and approved as medical devices. The fact that ChatGPT is not subject to such regulation is a problem in the eyes of medical and legal experts.
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The Chair of the German Ethics Council, Alena Buyx, said at the “Europe 2023” conference that ChatGPT is a surprisingly good tool for speech and text recognition. The AI can therefore take over tedious tasks for doctors, who in turn have more time for their patients. “I get really euphoric,” she said.
A stamp for AI in medicine
ChatGPT can also be used in diagnostics. “There are patient groups who find it easier to confide in a computer and ask questions,” she said. At the same time, there are always wrong or incorrect answers. “It’s far from a perfect system.”
A “gold standard” is therefore needed for such programs, comparable to the apps on prescription, which have to be certified as digital health applications by the Federal Office for Drugs and Medical Devices before they are reimbursed by the health insurance companies. A chatbot also needs a stamp “that you can rely on”.
Buyx assumes that offers like ChatGPT could quickly become established. A majority of Germans already use information from the Internet when they have health problems.
Most seek medical advice online
According to a survey by the Bitkom industry association, 74 percent of German Internet users are looking online for alternative treatment methods and 68 percent for additional information.
“Dr. Google is now the first source,” says Buyx. Chatbots could soon take this place for an initial symptom check. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has already integrated ChatGPT, and Google recently presented an alternative. Anyone who is looking for information about medical problems online will also come across chatbots in the future.
ChatGPT could revolutionize medicine in several ways.
(Photo: dpa)
The head of Techniker Krankenkasse, Jens Baas, also calls for stricter rules for such offers. “If I google for incontinence, I don’t have to be surprised if I only get adverts for diapers,” said Baas at the event. “We’re at a point where we need a data protection regulation.”
With an advanced version of the algorithm, however, he sees great opportunities in medicine. “It can be quite helpful if the patient talks to ChatGPT about the existing diagnoses before talking to the doctor.” However, users have to be sure what can and cannot happen to their health data.
In this context, the Federal Data Protection Commissioner Ulrich Kelber referred to the Artificial Intelligence Act, which the EU is currently preparing. Medical issues are also a priority.
“We don’t want to leave triage to an AI, for example,” said Kelber at the event – i.e. the decision as to who receives treatment in busy clinics and who does not. Explainability and transparency of algorithms are also important criteria.
What happens to the data ChatGPT gets?
There is also a big discussion about whether companies like Google or Meta are allowed to collect and process health data. The EU committee recently made it clear that this is not possible without the consent of the users. In individual cases, penalties of up to four percent of global sales could be imposed. “We’ll hit them on the finger,” said Kelber.
In general, however, ChatGPT can be a great support and “enable a whole range of evaluations that we don’t have today,” he said. Rural regions in particular could benefit from this.
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