One in five GPs use AI such as ChatGPT for daily tasks, survey finds

A fifth of GPs are using artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT to help with tasks such as writing letters for their patients after appointments, according to a survey.

The survey, published in the journal BMJ Health and Care Informatics, spoke to 1,006 GPs. They were asked whether they had ever used any form of AI chatbot in their clinical practice, such as ChatGPT, Bing AI or Google’s Gemini, and were then asked what they used these tools for.

One in five of the respondents said that they had used generative AI tools in their clinical practice and, of these, almost a third (29%) said that they had used them to generate documentation after patient appointments, while 28% said that they had used the tools to suggest a different diagnosis.

A quarter of respondents said they had used the AI tools to suggest treatment options for their patients. These AI tools, such as ChatGPT, work by generating a written answer to a question posed to the software.

The researchers said that the findings showed that “GPs may derive value from these tools, particularly with administrative tasks and to support clinical reasoning”.

However, the researchers went on to question whether these AI tools being used could risk harming and undermining patient privacy “since it is not clear how the internet companies behind generative AI use the information they gather”.

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Source: The Guardian, 17 September 2024