By Rachel V. Thomas New Delhi, May 6 : Generative AI chatbots like OpenAIs ChatGPT presents a great opportunity for both doctors and patients, but the tool is low on competence and precision as required in the field of healthcare, experts said here on Friday. Since being launched in November 2022, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. The AI chatbot, which can write original prose and chat with human fluency, has also cleared several exams, including the US Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). It scored nearly 50 per cent on Canada's board certification practice test for ophthalmology. Besides healthcare, the AI tool also cleared other MBA exams and also managed to clear the Google Coding Interview for Level 3 Engineers. A recent report by GlobalData, a data and analytics company, stated that the revolutionary technology holds the potential to completely change healthcare. It can motivate and interact with patients and also review a patient's symptoms and then recommend diagnostic advice. "Doctors can benefit from ChatGPT as it can give them quick, concise and precise responses," Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association's National Covid-19 Task Force, told IANS. On the other hand, "patients can use chatGPT to seek answers for common questions about their health condition" he said, adding this can make them better prepared to "ask the right questions in the limited time they get during a doctor's appointment." This was reflected in a recent study published in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute Cancer Spectrum, which showed that when it comes to answering people's questions about cancer, especially regarding myths and misconceptions, ChatGPT was found 97 per cent accurate in providing the correct information. The AI was so accurate that the test subjects were unaware whether the answers came from ChatGPT or the US National Cancer Institute. Generative AI like ChatGPT can help "in some scans, diagnostics and will ease out the pressure on the pathologist and radiologist to give us more accuracy," Dr Rajendra Pratap Gupta, a public health expert and former advisor to the health minister of India, told IANS. "The opportunity is phenomenal on the diagnostic side," he added. Although ChatGPT does not feel emotion or empathy, it pretends like it does, by providing extremely courteous pleasantries, as seen in the study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, where ChatGPT outperformed physicians in providing high-quality, empathetic advice to patient's questions. "It is remarkable that an inanimate object like a computer is perceived as 'more empathetic' by its users," said Dr Jayadevan, a Kochi-based gastroenterologist. He added that "ChatGPT has no limitation of time. This is in contrast with a busy doctor who might be hurrying in between patients and therefore might not be able to provide detailed text responses." Another area is "language proficiency" which can vary between individuals, "but is not a problem for ChatGPT". However, the AI tool also has limitations. "Unfortunately, ChatGPT is not precise in providing reference links to published research studies. Hopefully this defect will be rectified soon," Dr Jayadevan said. ChatGPT also works on information available until September 2021, and therefore might not have some of the more recent updates, he noted. A study led by researchers from the University of Maryland, showed ChatGPT to be helpful for breast cancer screening advice. But sometimes, the information was found to be inaccurate or even fictitious. According to Dr Gupta, "the excitement of generative AI like ChatGPT does not match the competence required for medicine". "So countries, like India, which have no treatment protocol based medical practice, should wait a few years to have standard practice guidelines which are adhered to and then apply AI," he added. However, in the coming few years, there will be a lot of disruption in the field of healthcare, the expert said. "We will not rule out the use of generative AI and conversational AI chatbots in primary care. It will have a very important role in primary care, and secondary prevention diagnostics. "However, for its use in treatment, we're still a few years away, but we'll get there," Dr Gupta noted. (Rachel V. Thomas can be contacted at rachel.t@ians.in) /IANS