The groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot shows potential as a time-saving tool for responding to patient questions sent to the urologist's office, suggests a study in the September issue of Urology Practice ® , an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. The artificial intelligence (AI) tool generated "acceptable" responses to nearly one-half of a sample of real-life patient questions, according to the new research by Michael Scott, MD, a urologist at Stanford University School of Medicine.
"Generative AI technologies may play a valuable role in providing prompt, accurate responses to routine patient questions – potentially alleviating patients' concerns while freeing up clinic time and resources to address other complex tasks," Dr. Scott comments. Can ChatGPT accurately answer questions from urology patients? ChatGPT is an innovative large language model (LLM) that has sparked interest across a wide range of settings, including health and medicine.
In some recent studies, ChatGPT has performed well in responding to various types of medical questions, although its performance in urology is less well-established. Modern electronic health record (EHR) systems enable patients to send medical questions directly to their doctors. "This shift has been associated with an increased time burden of EHR use for physicians with a large portion of this attributed to patient in-basket messages," the .
