In August, Lance Johnson woke up in the middle of the night, with an unbearable stomach ache in the bottom right. He initially denounced the pizza and ice cream they enjoyed the night before. However, five hours later, the 17-year-old from Phoenix was still struggling, so he decided to consult with his nearest expert, Chatgpt.
“I explained what I ate the night before and where the pain was. 'Do you think it's just my stomach?' And then I said it sounds like appendicitis based on how long it's been and where it was,” Johnson says. “I kept asking it more. It was something else, saying, “Based on what you explained, you need to check it out.” ”
Johnson followed Bott's advice. And certainly, the emergency room doctor immediately said he actually had appendicitis and needed immediate surgery. Johnson said in a recent Zoom interview with his parents. “I didn't know anything about appendicitis. I didn't even know it was on the bottom right.”
As Dr. Google takes ChatGpt, a similar scenario is being deployed nationwide. A recent survey found that one in seven adults over 50 use AI to seek health information, and one in four under 30 does so. Use is particularly common in areas where access to healthcare providers is restricted. There are many potential risks, such as receiving inaccurate, outdated or general information, but some say that AI platforms can help if they know how to use them the right way.
“There is 100% place for these tools to enrich the journey of care for our patients,” says Dr. Adam Rodman, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a general physician at Beth Israel Deecones Medical Center. “Learning Language Models (LLM) have very strong capabilities in some domains, but can fail dramatically in others. I don't want to rely on you as a doctor. But I think LLM is the best tool to help you understand your health right now.”
We asked our providers to share the cleverest ways patients use AI platforms like ChatGPT and how they can benefit your health as well.
Ask medical facts
LLMS is a useful way to get answers to fact-based queries. “What do plasma cells do?” – and questions about the disease process: “What happens when you mutate and get cancer?”
“This is not specific to the scenario,” says Dr. Adeel Khan, a hematologist and epidemiologist who is an assistant professor of medicine and public health at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “It's common and there's textbook answers.” For example, explanations about the purpose of plasma cells do not require context for individual situations. The answer is the same regardless of age, gender, or general health.
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Khan, who treats rare forms of cancer, has now been diagnosed with a newly diagnosed “tech-savvy patients” and “What is myeloma?” “What are the common side effects of lenalidomide?” and “What can myeloma patients expect?”
He prefers this type of use rather than seeking personalized medical advice. “As of now, AI should be used to broadly understand the facts of medicine and treatment,” he says. If you rely on tools for more personal-based insights, he will use whatever you learn as a supplement (not replace it instead). He adds that the information you get from ChatGpt can guide your next conversation with your doctor, but that should not be treated as the last word about your condition.
Plugins many details
Dr. Colin Banas suggests referring to such LLMs. “I am a 48-year-old man who has completed an X-level education and I need to understand what this diagnosis is and what potential treatment options are.”
“I think it's a completely fair game because it gives you a good answer,” says Banas, interior affairs officer and chief medical officer at Drfirst, a healthcare technology company. Details and context that provide tools including related health history and family history of a particular condition are better equipped to distribute relevant information. But don't forget:
Beware of privacy concerns
Some people upload medical test results such as EKG scans, brain MRIs, x-rays, or even whole medical records to LLMs like CHATGPT for “second opinion”-like analysis. Although Rodman is an interesting exercise that feeds conversations with your doctor that you are worried about the impact on your privacy. “If you put it in ChatGpt, I think everyone needs to know that the data is going straight to Openai,” he says. “You're giving tech companies your personal health information, but that's probably not a good thing.”
He adds that vision language models, a type of AI designed to understand information based on both image and text input, are not as accurate as text-based learning language models. “Vision language models aren't really that good at image interpretation,” says Rodman. “They are usually misusing texts. If they put EKG in it, it mainly helps them read the text and interpret it. He understands the urge to get a second opinion about potentially confusing consequences, but he says these tools are “really unreliable.”
Ask a fair question
When investigating, measures can be taken to reduce the likelihood of receiving biased information. For example, Kahn recently asked ChatGpt why chemotherapy is preferred over immunotherapy for certain types of cancer. He says the language was intentionally biased. It suggested that chemotherapy is a great choice and not necessarily true, and ChatGpt carved the benefits of chemotherapy accordingly.
According to Khan, a better approach is to ask the tool if chemotherapy or immunotherapy is preferred, and explain the pros and cons of each. AI tools are “not innocent,” he says. “How it is framed makes a difference.”
Helps to decode medical terms
AI tools like ChatGpt “we're really good at breaking doctor speaking,” says Banas. “Doctors use many advanced terms and abbreviations. We can't help with that. It's part of a long-standing training, but patients don't always understand.” If you feel mystic and go home, plug your questions into your favorite AI platform, he recommends.
For example, you may be confused by the repeated use of the word “grade.” When I ask what ChatGpt means, within seconds there is a short, easy to understand paragraph explaining that the grade “when viewed under a microscope or when evaluated clinically, it refers to a different method for each condition.
Finally, the bot will display a message like this: Grade year It's different from stagebecause those terms are often confused? ” From there, you can continue following the prompts until you are ready to close the medical school improvisation session.
Use it to prepare for a doctor's appointment
Tools like ChatGpt can help you formulate better questions to take to your doctor. “Patients use it to prepare for the visit in advance,” says Banas. “They say, 'Here's my symptoms. Are there some questions I should ask your doctor?” or, “What should my doctor be thinking?”
For example, suppose you enter this query into ChatGpt. This tool recommends seeking medical care in a timely manner, and offers “intensive questions” that can be divided into categories such as symptoms, testing, treatment, and next steps to help you “get the clearest answer.”
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Among the suggestions are, “Is this likely related to dehydration, infection, migraine disorder, or something more serious?”, “What initial tests should be done?”, “Do I need to check for anemia, thyroid function, or other metabolic issues?”, “What are the safe options for managing headaches and nausea in the meantime?”, “Should I avoid certain medicines and foods until we know more?”, “Should I be referred to a neurologist, endocrinologist, or other expert?”
If the questions are helpful, it is recommended that Banas write them down or take screenshots. You can show it to the doctor.
Help you understand your care plan
Maybe your doctor just said you have gout and prescribed a high dose of ibuprofen and colchicine. When you go home, you may find yourself unable to remember the side effects they listed while you absorb the news. LLMS is useful. Rodman suggests plugging in to a prompt like this. “My doctor thinks I have gout. This is what I was prescribed. What should I be aware of?
Use it to brainstorm lifestyle modifications
North Carolina MBA candidate Shriya Boppana believes ChatGpt helped manage eczema caused by skin and cosmetics. Whenever she tries out a new product, she uploads the information to an AI tool and documents whether it caused a response. “If that's the case, I can ask what ingredients caused the reaction and I can leave,” she says. “It was a running list and helped my skin stay very clear.”
New York creator economic strategist Gigi Robinson has not used ChatGpt to replace medical advice on endometriosis, but she says it is “a powerful tool for empowerment and mindset change.” As she navigates the Flare Up, she asks her to help brainstorm how to coordinate her work schedule and manage her projects so she can be productive while respecting her physical needs. “It helped me reconstruct a situation where I feel that I usually feel limited to opportunities to work smarter,” she says. Robinson also leans over ChatGpt to talk about lifestyle adjustments, including meal preparation ideas, travel accommodations and communication strategies to explain her health needs to clients and colleagues.
These uses illustrate the positive potential of AI tools. “Information is power,” says Lora Sparkman, a longtime registered nurse who is currently a clinical strategist at Relias, a medical technology and education company.
Put your doctor in the loop
If it doesn't improve according to the provider's treatment plan, Rodman is fine with the idea of uploading the document and prompts like this. “And when you go see your doctor [for a follow-up]be honest about using LLM and have an open conversation with them. ” he says.
read more: 10 questions you should always ask at a doctor's appointment
If you and your doctor do not agree on anything related to your care, and if their guidance contradicts or overlooks what you learned online, you can even show them a conversation with the chatbot, says Rodman. Many will be open to spending time talking to you through it. “Integrity and transparency are the best ways to have a good clinical conversation with your doctor,” he adds.
It also makes sense to experiment with your favorite AI platform to figure out what uses you find most useful. “The chatbot does not come with a user manual,” says Rodman. “No one could use it differently, they are a bit unpredictable.
