Abstract
BackgroundMany potential benefits for the uses of chatbots within the context of health care have been theorized, such as improved patient education and treatment compliance. However, little is known about the perspectives of practicing medical physicians on the use of chatbots in health care, even though these individuals are the traditional benchmark of proper patient care.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the perceptions of physicians regarding the use of health care chatbots, including their benefits, challenges, and risks to patients.MethodsA total of 100 practicing physicians across the United States completed a Web-based, self-report survey to examine their opinions of chatbot technology in health care. Descriptive statistics and frequencies were used to examine the characteristics of participants.ResultsA wide variety of positive and negative perspectives were reported on the use of health care chatbots, including the importance to patients for managing their own health and the benefits on physical, psychological, and behavioral health outcomes. More consistent agreement occurred with regard to administrative benefits associated with chatbots; many physicians believed that chatbots would be most beneficial for scheduling doctor appointments (78%, 78/100), locating health clinics (76%, 76/100), or providing medication information (71%, 71/100). Conversely, many physicians believed that chatbots cannot effectively care for all of the patients’ needs (76%, 76/100), cannot display human emotion (72%, 72/100), and cannot provide detailed diagnosis and treatment because of not knowing all of the personal factors associated with the patient (71%, 71/100). Many physicians also stated that health care chatbots could be a risk to patients if they self-diagnose too often (714%, 74/100) and do not accurately understand the diagnoses (74%, 74/100).ConclusionsPhysicians believed in both costs and benefits associated with chatbots, depending on the logistics and specific roles of the technology. Chatbots may have a beneficial role to play in health care to support, motivate, and coach patients as well as for streamlining organizational tasks; in essence, chatbots could become a surrogate for nonmedical caregivers. However, concerns remain on the inability of chatbots to comprehend the emotional state of humans as well as in areas where expert medical knowledge and intelligence is required.
Highlights
BackgroundChatbots, known as conversational agents, interactive agents, virtual agents, virtual humans, or virtual assistants, are artificial intelligence programs designed to simulate human conversation via text or speech
There are some instances showing the effectiveness of health care–related chatbots for certain outcomes, it is still not entirely clear whether this technology is better overall in improving all the various clinical health outcomes of patients and why it is not more highly adopted compared with traditional methods of care, that is, information coming from a human physician
Physicians were given a list of currently available health care chatbots, to examine their familiarity with some of the interfaces that could be potentially accessed by patients
Summary
BackgroundChatbots, known as conversational agents, interactive agents, virtual agents, virtual humans, or virtual assistants, are artificial intelligence programs designed to simulate human conversation via text or speech. Many positive viewpoints have been made on the potential uses of health care chatbots within the marketing and business world [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]; little scientific research has examined their effectiveness in real-world patient scenarios, that is, to improve health outcomes [11,12]. Little is known about the perspectives of practicing medical physicians on the use of chatbots in health care, even though these individuals are the traditional benchmark of proper patient care. Many physicians believed that chatbots cannot effectively care for all of the patients’ needs (76%, 76/100), cannot display human emotion (72%, 72/100), and cannot provide detailed diagnosis and treatment because of not knowing all of the personal factors associated with the patient (71%, 71/100). Concerns remain on the inability of chatbots to comprehend the emotional state of humans as well as in areas where expert medical knowledge and intelligence is required
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