According to a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, ChatGPT outperformed physicians in providing high-quality, empathetic advice to the questions asked by the patients. There has been much conjecture about how artificial intelligence (AI) assistants such as ChatGPT can be employed in medicine.

In the study, the researchers from the University of California, San Diego, compared written responses from physicians and those from ChatGPT to real-world health questions. The researchers noted that while the COVID-19 pandemic increased the adoption of virtual healthcare facilities, physicians were overwhelmed by a flood of electronic patient communications requesting medical assistance. This led to record-breaking levels of professional burnout.

In the study, the researchers evaluated the role of ChatGPT by randomly selecting 195 interactions from Reddits AskDocs in which a verified physician answered a public inquiry. The team provided the original question to ChatGPT and copied the response. A panel of three licensed healthcare professionals assessed each question and the corresponding responses. The panel was blinded to whether the response originated from a physician or ChatGPT.

The panel compared the responses based on information quality and empathy. A panel of licensed healthcare professionals liked ChatGPTs comments 79% of the time and evaluated them as higher quality and more sympathetic.

Furthermore, ChatGPT responses were rated significantly higher in quality than physician responses. The findings of the study showed that good or very good-quality responses were 3.6 times higher for ChatGPT than physician responses. The answers were also 9.8 times more empathetic or highly empathetic for ChatGPT responses in comparison to responses given by the physicians. 

(Source: https://www.mid-day.com/technology/article/chatgpt-shows-better-empathy-to-patients-than-doctors-study-23283760 )