Can You Trust AI for Health Advice?

It seems like artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere these days. What once seemed like science fiction is now an everyday reality, helping you monitor your sleep and automatically turn on your outdoor lights when you get home. For better or for worse, AI is here to stay.

But does AI have a role to play in our health? With so much false or unverified information circulating across the web, can we trust AI to give us sound medical information? We asked EvergreenHealth primary care provider Dr. Joseph Lai for some guidance on how best to use AI to benefit your health.

AI as a Complimentary Tool for Your Healthcare

Dr. Lai said the constraints of the modern American health system often make it hard to access care quicky. "People want to have access right now and 24/7. But due to the high demand for services, there isn't always availability to see your primary care doctor right away, so AI is a useful tool to answer some basic questions in the meantime," he said.

Dr. Lai views AI as a helpful tool for patients to become informed about their conditions. "If a patient comes in to see me and they're using AI to research their symptoms, I view that as a starting place to talk about things," Dr. Lai said. By using AI to translate medical jargon and create informed questions, he added, patients can better understand their conditions and feel more involved in their care decisions. But there are a few other issues to consider:

• AI chatbots are not HIPAA compliant. Even if you de-identify the information, do not upload your medical chart into an AI tool. Unless you opt out, your data can be retained and used in the future to train the chatbot.
  • Tip: When using AI for health advice, share only the minimum amount of information necessary and make sure all your personal data is removed.
• AI might use non-expert sources. Only use an AI chatbot that shows the sources of the information it gives you and don't trust anything from a non-expert source.
  • Tip: If possible, provide specific reputable sources to the chatbot and ask it to use them. Dr. Lai also suggests "pitting the bots against each other," by entering the same details into several different chatbots to find consistent information, which is more likely to be accurate.
• AI that increases your anxiety is not good AI. Use AI to learn about your symptoms, not to diagnose them. A new study found that even small variations in the questions asked can create widely varying answers. The researchers also discovered that AI responses often provide a mix of both accurate and inaccurate information, and that many users can't tell the difference.
  • Tip: Your AI chatbot is only as good as the information you give it. Unlike your primary care or specialist providers, AI cannot give you information that considers other important health factors. So, if your chatbot tells you something about your symptoms that makes you worried and anxious, don't doom-spiral. Schedule an appointment with your provider instead. Remember, AI can't diagnose or heal you; only doctors can do that.

Despite these limitations, AI is an excellent tool for translating complex medical jargon into understandable information. We've all received lab or scan reports with many-syllabled words that sound like instructions for launching a spaceship. AI can remove jargon from complex medical information and offer sources to help you understand it better.

"AI does really well with black and white," Dr. Lai said. "But humans don't really work that way. AI can start a conversation with a patient, but it can't take all your symptoms into account and make a diagnosis." By requiring AI to use credible sources, protecting your private health information and using it to learn about your condition while leaving care decisions to you and your doctor, you can stay informed, learn how to better phrase your questions and become more involved in your healthcare.