Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum

John W. Ayers, Adam Poliak, Mark Dredze, et al, at the JAMA Network:

Question: Can an artificial intelligence chatbot assistant, provide responses to patient questions that are of comparable quality and empathy to those written by physicians?

Findings: In this cross-sectional study of 195 randomly drawn patient questions from a social media forum, a team of licensed health care professionals compared physician’s and chatbot’s responses to patient’s questions asked publicly on a public social media forum. The chatbot responses were preferred over physician responses and rated significantly higher for both quality and empathy.

Meaning: These results suggest that artificial intelligence assistants may be able to aid in drafting responses to patient questions.

More here.