Potential Use of ChatGPT in Responding to Patient Questions and Creating Patient Resources

Abstract

ChatGPT (OpenAI) is an artificial intelligence–based free natural language processing model that generates complex responses to user-generated prompts. The advent of this tool comes at a time when physician burnout is at an all-time high, which is attributed at least in part to time spent outside of the patient encounter within the electronic medical record (documenting the encounter, responding to patient messages, etc). Although ChatGPT is not specifically designed to provide medical information, it can generate preliminary responses to patients’ questions about their medical conditions and can precipitately create educational patient resources, which do inevitably require rigorous editing and fact-checking on the part of the health care provider to ensure accuracy. In this way, this assistive technology has the potential to not only enhance a physician’s efficiency and work-life balance but also enrich the patient-physician relationship and ultimately improve patient outcomes.