un estudio en JAMA medicina interna sugiere que los asistentes de IA como ChatGPT podrían mejorar drásticamente la atención médica. Usando preguntas de salud de la vida real, el estudio encontró que los profesionales de la salud preferían las respuestas de IA sobre las respuestas de los médicos el 79% de las veces, citando una mayor calidad y empatía. Si bien no reemplaza a los médicos, la IA podría integrarse en los sistemas de atención médica para mejorar la atención al paciente, reducir potencialmente el agotamiento de los médicos y mejorar la prestación general de atención médica.
Aunque la IA no reemplaza a su médico, un nuevo JAMA medicina interna El artículo sugiere que los médicos que trabajan con tecnologías como ChatGPT podrían revolucionar la medicina.
Ha habido muchas especulaciones sobre cómo los avances en los asistentes de inteligencia artificial (IA) como ChatGPT podrían usarse en medicina.
Un nuevo estudio publicado hoy (28 de abril de 2023) en JAMA medicina interna dirigido por el Dr. John W. Ayers del Instituto Qualcomm en la Universidad de California, San Diego (UCSD) proporciona información sobre el papel que los asistentes de IA podrían desempeñar en la medicina. El estudio comparó las respuestas escritas y de ChatGPT de los médicos con preguntas de salud reales. Un panel de profesionales de la salud autorizados prefirió las respuestas de ChatGPT el 79 % de las veces y calificó las respuestas de ChatGPT como de mayor calidad y más empáticas.
«Las oportunidades para mejorar la atención médica con IA son enormes», dijo Ayers, quien también es vicejefe de innovación en la división de enfermedades infecciosas y salud pública global de la Facultad de Medicina de UCSD. «La atención aumentada por IA es el futuro de la medicina».
¿ChatGPT está listo para la salud?
En el nuevo estudio, el equipo de investigación intentó responder a la pregunta: ¿Puede ChatGPT responder con precisión las preguntas que los pacientes envían a sus médicos? Si es así, los modelos de IA podrían integrarse en los sistemas de atención médica para mejorar las respuestas de los médicos a las preguntas enviadas por los pacientes y aliviar la carga cada vez mayor de los médicos.
«ChatGPT podría aprobar un examen de licencia médica», dijo el coautor del estudio, el Dr. Davey Smith, médico científico, codirector del Instituto de Investigación Clínica y Traslacional Altman de UCSD y profesor de la ‘Escuela de Medicina de UCSD’. pero responder directamente a las preguntas de los pacientes con precisión y empatía es un juego de pelota diferente.
«EL[{» attribute=»»>COVID-19 pandemic accelerated virtual healthcare adoption,” added study co-author Dr. Eric Leas, a Qualcomm Institute affiliate and assistant professor in the UCSD Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. “While this made accessing care easier for patients, physicians are burdened by a barrage of electronic patient messages seeking medical advice that have contributed to record-breaking levels of physician burnout.”
Designing a Study to Test ChatGPT in a Healthcare Setting
To obtain a large and diverse sample of healthcare questions and physician answers that did not contain identifiable personal information, the team turned to social media where millions of patients publicly post medical questions to which doctors respond: Reddit’s AskDocs.
r/AskDocs is a subreddit with approximately 452,000 members who post medical questions and verified healthcare professionals submit answers. While anyone can respond to a question, moderators verify healthcare professionals’ credentials and responses display the respondent’s level of credentials. The result is a large and diverse set of patient medical questions and accompanying answers from licensed medical professionals.
While some may wonder if question-answer exchanges on social media are a fair test, team members noted that the exchanges were reflective of their clinical experience.
The team randomly sampled 195 exchanges from AskDocs where a verified physician responded to a public question. The team provided the original question to ChatGPT and asked it to author a response. A panel of three licensed healthcare professionals assessed each question and the corresponding responses and were blinded to whether the response originated from a physician or ChatGPT. They compared responses based on information quality and empathy, noting which one they preferred.
The panel of healthcare professional evaluators preferred ChatGPT responses to physician responses 79% of the time.
“ChatGPT messages responded with nuanced and accurate information that often addressed more aspects of the patient’s questions than physician responses,” said Jessica Kelley, a nurse practitioner with San Diego firm Human Longevity and study co-author.
Additionally, ChatGPT responses were rated significantly higher in quality than physician responses: good or very good quality responses were 3.6 times higher for ChatGPT than physicians (physicians 22.1% versus ChatGPT 78.5%). The responses were also more empathic: empathetic or very empathetic responses were 9.8 times higher for ChatGPT than for physicians (physicians 4.6% versus ChatGPT 45.1%).
“I never imagined saying this,” added Dr. Aaron Goodman, an associate clinical professor at UCSD School of Medicine and study coauthor, “but ChatGPT is a prescription I’d like to give to my inbox. The tool will transform the way I support my patients.”
Harnessing AI Assistants for Patient Messages
“While our study pitted ChatGPT against physicians, the ultimate solution isn’t throwing your doctor out altogether,” said Dr. Adam Poliak, an assistant professor of Computer Science at Bryn Mawr College and study co-author. “Instead, a physician harnessing ChatGPT is the answer for better and empathetic care.”
“Our study is among the first to show how AI assistants can potentially solve real-world healthcare delivery problems,” said Dr. Christopher Longhurst, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Digital Officer at UC San Diego Health. “These results suggest that tools like ChatGPT can efficiently draft high quality, personalized medical advice for review by clinicians, and we are beginning that process at UCSD Health.”
Dr. Mike Hogarth, a physician-bioinformatician, co-director of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute at UCSD, professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and study co-author, added, “It is important that integrating AI assistants into healthcare messaging be done in the context of a randomized controlled trial to judge how the use of AI assistants impact outcomes for both physicians and patients.”
In addition to improving workflow, investments into AI assistant messaging could impact patient health and physician performance.
Dr. Mark Dredze, the John C Malone Associate Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins and study co-author, noted: “We could use these technologies to train doctors in patient-centered communication, eliminate health disparities suffered by minority populations who often seek healthcare via messaging, build new medical safety systems, and assist doctors by delivering higher quality and more efficient care.”
Reference: “Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum” by John W. Ayers, PhD, MA; Adam Poliak, PhD; Mark Dredze, PhD; Eric C. Leas, PhD, MPH; Zechariah Zhu, BS; Jessica B. Kelley, MSN; Dennis J. Faix, MD; Aaron M. Goodman, MD; Christopher A. Longhurst, MD, MS; Michael Hogarth, MD; Davey M. Smith, MD, MAS, 28 April 2023, JAMA Internal Medicine.
DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1838
In addition to Ayers, Poliak, Dredze, Leas, Kelley, Goodman, Longhurst, Hogarth and Smith, authors of the JAMA Internal Medicine paper, “Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum,” are Zechariah Zhu of UCSD and Dr. Dennis J. Faix of the Naval Health Research Center.