In case you missed it, recent headlines have been focusing on the fact that some doctors in the UK are using generative AI.
According to the British Medical Association, some general practitioners (GPs) in the UK are using generative AI in writing letters and suggesting diagnoses. But the online uproar surrounding this has certainly overinflated how common this is.
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A survey conducted by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), assessed 1,006 GPs and queried if they had ever used a generative AI chatbot such as Gemini or ChatGPT – followed by a question on what they used these bots for.
A total of 20% of the 1,006 respondents admitted to using generative AI (that’s 201 GPs from the sample). Of this 20%, 29% said they used generative AI to generate documents (that is 58 GPs), while 28% (and that’s 56 GPs) said they used the tools to suggest a diagnosis. However, in any given survey, it is important to consider that there are some confounding variables in responses. While only 20% admitted to using chatbots, there may be far more GPs who are using the tools without answering truthfully.
But what does this mean?
The BMJ has stated that “GPs may derive value from these tools, particularly with administrative tasks and to support clinical reasoning”. However, it is also questioning patient privacy, as it is unclear how the companies behind generative AI tools use the information they gather. Shabnam Pervez, strategic intelligence analyst at leading data and analytics company GlobalData, challenges: “However, the healthcare sector is no stranger to the digitalisation, particularly of generative AI. OpenAI launched a medical chatbot called ‘Dr. GenAI’, which aims to help people receive rapid, personalised medical information based on their unique medical conditions. The chatbot can study a person using medical information including vitals, lab test results, and physical traits, and has been developed using the features of the generative AI brain health platform, CERVAI. Ever since generative AI launched, healthcare is one of the many sectors that have shown a keen interest in the technology.”
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“Regulating generative AI in healthcare requires a balanced approach where policymakers prioritise patient safety and then innovation, which should be considered in all applications of the tech in healthcare. Key strategies should include transparency, data privacy, clinical validation, human oversight, ethical considerations, and adaptive regulation. By implementing these measures, healthcare can operate in a regulatory environment that fosters responsible development and deployment of generative AI”. She adds: “So while GPs may use generative AI in their practice, this is largely safe if there is human intervention to tailor the artificial intelligence-based output. Generative AI could be used as a rough skeleton to base ideas on, while GPs add personalisation to this using their clinical expertise”.
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