6 ms·

I understand all the chatter about LLMs hallucinating, or making assumptions, or not being able to understand or provide the more human/emotional element of hea

I understand all the chatter about LLMs hallucinating, or making assumptions, or not being able to understand or provide the more human/emotional element of health care. But the question I ask myself is: is this better than the alternative? if I wasn't asking ChatGPT, where would I go to get help? The answers I can anticipate are: questionably trustworthy web content; an overconfident friend who may have read questionably trustworthy web content; my mom who is referencing health recommendations from 1972. And as best I can imagine, LLMs are going to likely to provide health advice that's as good but likely better than any of those alternatives. With that said, I acknowledge that people are likely more inclined to trust ChatGPT more like a licensed medical provider, at which point the comparison may become somewhat more murky, especially with higher severity health concerns.

timeon 9mo ago
> if I wasn't asking ChatGPT, where would I go to get help? Is this serious question? Can't you call/visit doctor?
- jofzar 9mo ago
  I'm Australian, but from what I understand from my friends in America, no. They only go when it's urgent/very worrying.
  - zdragnar 9mo ago
    If you don't need to be physically seen to make a determination, most hospitals and networks operate phone lines where you can speak with a nurse who will triage symptoms and either recommend home remedies or an appointment as needed. I'm not sure if this has switched entirely to video calls or not, but when it became popular it was a great way to avoid overloading urgent care and general physicians with non-urgent help requests.
    - beaugunderson 9mo ago
      As someone who was recently injured and waited three months to see a specialist in Seattle, these lines were not helpful ("yes, you should make an appointment"). The only way I was able to see someone was to write a script that blew up my phone when I got a cancellation window email (the first two I missed even though I responded within 30 seconds).
      - zdragnar 9mo ago
        Yeah, those lines are for triage, not specialty care. It's nice when you've got an infant and are a new parent and everything is terrifying, or a fever and want to know if it is bad enough to warrant going in somewhere.
        beaugunderson 9mo ago
        Exactly, they're not an alternative to a doctor, which is the point... it's nearly impossible to see a provider these days if you don't have a pre-existing relationship. I moved recently and finding a PCP who is accepting new patients is also maddening.
  - furyofantares 9mo ago
    I'm not fond of the fact that it's owned by Amazon but I use OneMedical and I can get a call to a doctor ~immediately, or to my regular doctor within a day or so.
  - wincy 9mo ago
    I took an at home flu test, messaged my doctor at no cost telling him I’d tested positive (he didn’t even ask for a picture) and paid $25 from a tax free the same day. My doctor is part of a large hospital system too, he didn’t want me to come in just sent the rx.
  - 8bitsrule 9mo ago
    People with public health care may have a hard time understanding the costs of medical advice and pharma here in the US. We're in deep doo-doo.
  - rainonmoon 9mo ago
    I'm also Australian and some of these comments have really made me re-appreciate what we have in Medicare. Damn, it's got its issues, but the American attitudes towards their healthcare system are downright bleak. Deeply worrying that the prevailing attitude seems to be "But ChatGPT is so good" rather than "Our healthcare system is so bad." Remind me to visit my GP next week to thank them.
- mountainriver 9mo ago
  A lot of doctors also give bad and incorrect advice. I actually find that to be the norm
- NuclearPM 9mo ago
  With what money?
- gck1 9mo ago
  It depends on where you live and what the issue is. Where I live, doctors are only good for life threatening stuff - the things you probably wouldn't be asking ChatGPT anyway. But for general health, you either: 1. Have to book in advance, wait, and during the visit doctor just says that it's not a big deal, because they really don't have time or capacity for this. 2. You go private, doctor goes on a wild hunt with you, you spend a ton of time and money, and then 3 months later you get the answer ChatGPT could have told you in a few minuites for $20/mo (and probably with better backed, more recent research). If anything, the only time ChatGPT answers wrong on health related matters is when it tries to be careful and omits details because "be advised, I'm not a doctor, I can't give you this information" bullshit.
- Imme_Play_5550 9mo ago
  I have no job and no health insurance. After crafting my prompt correctly (I have W symptoms, X blood markers, have Y lifestyle, and Z demography) ChatGPT accurately diagnosed my problem. (You have REDS and need to eat more food, dumbass.) Or, I could've gone to a doctor and overloaded our healthcare system even more. ChatGPT serves as a good sanity check.
- zeryx 9mo ago
  Actual access to reliable healthcare is a massive assumption to make, not everyone has incredible health insurance or lives in a country with sufficient doctors/med staff. Most places are in crisis for lack of resources, I'd rather ask chatgpt or Gemini for something urgent rather than wait 5+ hours in ER for the doctor to say "just take some aspirin and go to a walk-in tomorrow"
  - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
    Not to mention, going to an ER for something that doesn't turn out to be an emergency carries a high risk of coming back home with something significantly worse. Last time I was in ER, I accompanied my wife; we got bounced due to lack of appropriate doctor on site, she ended up getting help in another hospital, and I came back home with severe case of COVID-19. Related: every pediatrician I've been to with my kids during the flu season says the same thing: if you can't get an appointment in a local clinic, stay home; avoid hospitals unless the kid develops life-threatening symptoms, as visiting such places carry high risk of the kid catching something even worse (usually RSV).
    - dgacmu 9mo ago
      There are only two places I still routinely wear a mask (n95) these days: Airplanes from waiting at the gate until about 10 minutes after takeoff when the air handling system has had time to clear things out (and the same after landing), and hospital/doctors visits. It's such a high ROI. We used to observe that our kid(s) got sick every time we flew over the winter break to visit family. We no longer have this problem. (we do still have kids.) Not getting sick turns out to be really quite nice. :-) Hanging out in the pediatrician's office surrounded by snotty, coughing children who are not mine...
- browningstreet 9mo ago
  I vibe coded an app and recorded all the things happening to my 50-something body. I shared that list with a few MDs -- they were useless. They literally can't handle anything except acute cases. It's like telling someone to ask their doctor about nutrition. It's not in their scope any longer. They'll tell you to try things and figure it out. The US medical industry abdicated their thing a long time ago. Doctors do something I'm sure, but discuss/advise/inquire isn't really one of them. This was multiple doctors, in multiple locations, in various modalities, after blood tests and MRIs and CT scans. I live with literally zero of my issues resolved even a little tiny bit. And I paid a lot of money out of pocket (on top of insurance) for this experience.
  - bawana 9mo ago
    Medical training is designed to produce operators who will add value to corporate health systems - prescribe pills, do procedures, or anything that can generate 'billable hours'. Actually educating patients to be healthy will only reduce corporate health system profits. Why do you think we have been fighting the 'war on cancer' since the 60s? Now 'personalized medicine' and synthetic peptide and complex immunotherapies are the latest twist with costs into 5 figures (orders of magnitude greater than standard therapies)and efficacy only better by a factor of 2 at best. Many treatments promise improved 'partial response rate' increases from 10 % to 50% yet a partial response is not a significant improvement. AI is a disaster waiting to happen. As it is simply a regurgitation of what has been already said by real scientists, researchers,and physicians, it will be the 'entry drug' to advertise expensive therapies. Thank goodness our corporations have not stooped to providing healthcare in exchange for blood donation, skin donation, or other organ donation. But I can imagine United HEalthcare merging with Blackstone so that people who need healthcare can get 'health care loans'.
    - dash2 9mo ago
      > Why do you think we have been fighting the 'war on cancer' since the 60s? Actually, we have made huge progress in the war on cancer, so this example doesn’t seem to support your narrative.
  - 9mo ago
- ihuman 9mo ago
  Until very recently, it took a week to get an appointment with my primary care doctor, and calls weren't an option. Now that video calls are an option, I get get one in a day or two. I could always go to urgent care to get an answer faster, but that costs more.
com2kid 9mo ago
Chatgpt helped me solve a side effect I had with a medication just by suggesting a changing to dose timing. Solid improvement to my QoL just from one small change. My doctor completely agreed with the suggestion. When I got worried about an exercise suggestion from an app I'm using (weight being used for prone dumbbell leg curls) Chatgpt confirmed there is a suggested upper limit on weight for that exercise and that I should switch it out. I appreciate not injuring myself. (Gemini gave a horrible response, heh...) Chatgpt is dangerous because it is still too agreeable and when you do go outside what it knows the answers get wrong fast, but when it is useful it is very useful.
throwaway132448 9mo ago
Reach further in to your local community? You need to look outside the screens. Your life will be better for it.
hermanzegerman 9mo ago
> if I wasn't asking ChatGPT, where would I go to get help? To an MD?
- cyral 9mo ago
  Getting a potential answer right away is certainly temping over waiting weeks to get an appointment
  - hermanzegerman 9mo ago
    You have to wait weeks to be seen by a family doctor?
    - hephaes7us 9mo ago
      If the GP can handle my problem, I probably didn't need to go to the doctor anyway. A lot of care is done by specialists, and it can _easily_ take weeks or months to get an appointment with one. This is strongly dependent on one's insurance network though.
      - hermanzegerman 9mo ago
        That's just a very arrogant take, from many patients that couldn't be more wrong. Obviously a GP refers to specialists when necessary, but he is qualified to triage issues and perform initial treatment in many cases.
        hephaes7us 9mo ago
        Ok, to be fair, they _can_ probably handle my problems better than I can. But, presumably for liability and out of a genuine attempt to get me the best care possible, they _prefer_ to send me off to a specialist. Either way I'm not being treated until the specialist has time, which take a couple months at least.
    - Flere-Imsaho 9mo ago
1412312510129 9mo ago
This is the same as Googling your symptoms, but on a more broad scale. I think the issue here is how many people are going to give themself self-induced health anxiety because of this result. There is no deny on positive case of people actually being helped by ChatGPT. It's well known that Doctors can often dismiss symptoms of rare conditions, and those people specifically find way more success on the internet because the people with similar conditions tends to gather here. This effect will repeat with ChatGPT.
quitit 9mo ago
There is nothing wrong with obtaining additional, even false, information from any source that is available to you. (AI, Search, Websites/Blogs, Podcasts, influencers, word-of-mouth, etc) It's what you do with that information that is important - the correct path is to take your questions to a medical professional. Only a medical professional can give you a diagnosis, they can also answer other questions and address incorrect information. ChatGPT is very good for providing you with new avenues to follow-up upon, it may even help discover the correct condition which a doctor had missed. However it is not able to deliver a diagnosis, always leave that to a medical professional. This actually differs very little from people Googling their symptoms - where the result was the same: take the new information to your medical professional, and remember to get a second opinion (or more) for any serious medical condition, or issues which do not seem to be fully resolved.

timeon 9mo ago

> if I wasn't asking ChatGPT, where would I go to get help? Is this serious question? Can't you call/visit doctor?

jofzar 9mo ago
I'm Australian, but from what I understand from my friends in America, no. They only go when it's urgent/very worrying.
- zdragnar 9mo ago
  If you don't need to be physically seen to make a determination, most hospitals and networks operate phone lines where you can speak with a nurse who will triage symptoms and either recommend home remedies or an appointment as needed. I'm not sure if this has switched entirely to video calls or not, but when it became popular it was a great way to avoid overloading urgent care and general physicians with non-urgent help requests.
  - beaugunderson 9mo ago
    As someone who was recently injured and waited three months to see a specialist in Seattle, these lines were not helpful ("yes, you should make an appointment"). The only way I was able to see someone was to write a script that blew up my phone when I got a cancellation window email (the first two I missed even though I responded within 30 seconds).
    - zdragnar 9mo ago
      Yeah, those lines are for triage, not specialty care. It's nice when you've got an infant and are a new parent and everything is terrifying, or a fever and want to know if it is bad enough to warrant going in somewhere.
      - beaugunderson 9mo ago
        Exactly, they're not an alternative to a doctor, which is the point... it's nearly impossible to see a provider these days if you don't have a pre-existing relationship. I moved recently and finding a PCP who is accepting new patients is also maddening.
- furyofantares 9mo ago
  I'm not fond of the fact that it's owned by Amazon but I use OneMedical and I can get a call to a doctor ~immediately, or to my regular doctor within a day or so.
- wincy 9mo ago
  I took an at home flu test, messaged my doctor at no cost telling him I’d tested positive (he didn’t even ask for a picture) and paid $25 from a tax free the same day. My doctor is part of a large hospital system too, he didn’t want me to come in just sent the rx.
- 8bitsrule 9mo ago
  People with public health care may have a hard time understanding the costs of medical advice and pharma here in the US. We're in deep doo-doo.
- rainonmoon 9mo ago
  I'm also Australian and some of these comments have really made me re-appreciate what we have in Medicare. Damn, it's got its issues, but the American attitudes towards their healthcare system are downright bleak. Deeply worrying that the prevailing attitude seems to be "But ChatGPT is so good" rather than "Our healthcare system is so bad." Remind me to visit my GP next week to thank them.
mountainriver 9mo ago
A lot of doctors also give bad and incorrect advice. I actually find that to be the norm
NuclearPM 9mo ago
With what money?
gck1 9mo ago
It depends on where you live and what the issue is. Where I live, doctors are only good for life threatening stuff - the things you probably wouldn't be asking ChatGPT anyway. But for general health, you either: 1. Have to book in advance, wait, and during the visit doctor just says that it's not a big deal, because they really don't have time or capacity for this. 2. You go private, doctor goes on a wild hunt with you, you spend a ton of time and money, and then 3 months later you get the answer ChatGPT could have told you in a few minuites for $20/mo (and probably with better backed, more recent research). If anything, the only time ChatGPT answers wrong on health related matters is when it tries to be careful and omits details because "be advised, I'm not a doctor, I can't give you this information" bullshit.
Imme_Play_5550 9mo ago
I have no job and no health insurance. After crafting my prompt correctly (I have W symptoms, X blood markers, have Y lifestyle, and Z demography) ChatGPT accurately diagnosed my problem. (You have REDS and need to eat more food, dumbass.) Or, I could've gone to a doctor and overloaded our healthcare system even more. ChatGPT serves as a good sanity check.
zeryx 9mo ago
Actual access to reliable healthcare is a massive assumption to make, not everyone has incredible health insurance or lives in a country with sufficient doctors/med staff. Most places are in crisis for lack of resources, I'd rather ask chatgpt or Gemini for something urgent rather than wait 5+ hours in ER for the doctor to say "just take some aspirin and go to a walk-in tomorrow"
- TeMPOraL 9mo ago
  Not to mention, going to an ER for something that doesn't turn out to be an emergency carries a high risk of coming back home with something significantly worse. Last time I was in ER, I accompanied my wife; we got bounced due to lack of appropriate doctor on site, she ended up getting help in another hospital, and I came back home with severe case of COVID-19. Related: every pediatrician I've been to with my kids during the flu season says the same thing: if you can't get an appointment in a local clinic, stay home; avoid hospitals unless the kid develops life-threatening symptoms, as visiting such places carry high risk of the kid catching something even worse (usually RSV).
  - dgacmu 9mo ago
    There are only two places I still routinely wear a mask (n95) these days: Airplanes from waiting at the gate until about 10 minutes after takeoff when the air handling system has had time to clear things out (and the same after landing), and hospital/doctors visits. It's such a high ROI. We used to observe that our kid(s) got sick every time we flew over the winter break to visit family. We no longer have this problem. (we do still have kids.) Not getting sick turns out to be really quite nice. :-) Hanging out in the pediatrician's office surrounded by snotty, coughing children who are not mine...
browningstreet 9mo ago
I vibe coded an app and recorded all the things happening to my 50-something body. I shared that list with a few MDs -- they were useless. They literally can't handle anything except acute cases. It's like telling someone to ask their doctor about nutrition. It's not in their scope any longer. They'll tell you to try things and figure it out. The US medical industry abdicated their thing a long time ago. Doctors do something I'm sure, but discuss/advise/inquire isn't really one of them. This was multiple doctors, in multiple locations, in various modalities, after blood tests and MRIs and CT scans. I live with literally zero of my issues resolved even a little tiny bit. And I paid a lot of money out of pocket (on top of insurance) for this experience.
- bawana 9mo ago
  Medical training is designed to produce operators who will add value to corporate health systems - prescribe pills, do procedures, or anything that can generate 'billable hours'. Actually educating patients to be healthy will only reduce corporate health system profits. Why do you think we have been fighting the 'war on cancer' since the 60s? Now 'personalized medicine' and synthetic peptide and complex immunotherapies are the latest twist with costs into 5 figures (orders of magnitude greater than standard therapies)and efficacy only better by a factor of 2 at best. Many treatments promise improved 'partial response rate' increases from 10 % to 50% yet a partial response is not a significant improvement. AI is a disaster waiting to happen. As it is simply a regurgitation of what has been already said by real scientists, researchers,and physicians, it will be the 'entry drug' to advertise expensive therapies. Thank goodness our corporations have not stooped to providing healthcare in exchange for blood donation, skin donation, or other organ donation. But I can imagine United HEalthcare merging with Blackstone so that people who need healthcare can get 'health care loans'.
  - dash2 9mo ago
    > Why do you think we have been fighting the 'war on cancer' since the 60s? Actually, we have made huge progress in the war on cancer, so this example doesn’t seem to support your narrative.
- 9mo ago
ihuman 9mo ago
Until very recently, it took a week to get an appointment with my primary care doctor, and calls weren't an option. Now that video calls are an option, I get get one in a day or two. I could always go to urgent care to get an answer faster, but that costs more.

com2kid 9mo ago

Chatgpt helped me solve a side effect I had with a medication just by suggesting a changing to dose timing. Solid improvement to my QoL just from one small change. My doctor completely agreed with the suggestion. When I got worried about an exercise suggestion from an app I'm using (weight being used for prone dumbbell leg curls) Chatgpt confirmed there is a suggested upper limit on weight for that exercise and that I should switch it out. I appreciate not injuring myself. (Gemini gave a horrible response, heh...) Chatgpt is dangerous because it is still too agreeable and when you do go outside what it knows the answers get wrong fast, but when it is useful it is very useful.

throwaway132448 9mo ago

Reach further in to your local community? You need to look outside the screens. Your life will be better for it.

hermanzegerman 9mo ago

> if I wasn't asking ChatGPT, where would I go to get help? To an MD?

cyral 9mo ago
Getting a potential answer right away is certainly temping over waiting weeks to get an appointment
- hermanzegerman 9mo ago
  You have to wait weeks to be seen by a family doctor?
  - hephaes7us 9mo ago
    If the GP can handle my problem, I probably didn't need to go to the doctor anyway. A lot of care is done by specialists, and it can _easily_ take weeks or months to get an appointment with one. This is strongly dependent on one's insurance network though.
    - hermanzegerman 9mo ago
      That's just a very arrogant take, from many patients that couldn't be more wrong. Obviously a GP refers to specialists when necessary, but he is qualified to triage issues and perform initial treatment in many cases.
      - hephaes7us 9mo ago
        Ok, to be fair, they _can_ probably handle my problems better than I can. But, presumably for liability and out of a genuine attempt to get me the best care possible, they _prefer_ to send me off to a specialist. Either way I'm not being treated until the specialist has time, which take a couple months at least.
  - Flere-Imsaho 9mo ago

1412312510129 9mo ago

This is the same as Googling your symptoms, but on a more broad scale. I think the issue here is how many people are going to give themself self-induced health anxiety because of this result. There is no deny on positive case of people actually being helped by ChatGPT. It's well known that Doctors can often dismiss symptoms of rare conditions, and those people specifically find way more success on the internet because the people with similar conditions tends to gather here. This effect will repeat with ChatGPT.

quitit 9mo ago

There is nothing wrong with obtaining additional, even false, information from any source that is available to you. (AI, Search, Websites/Blogs, Podcasts, influencers, word-of-mouth, etc) It's what you do with that information that is important - the correct path is to take your questions to a medical professional. Only a medical professional can give you a diagnosis, they can also answer other questions and address incorrect information. ChatGPT is very good for providing you with new avenues to follow-up upon, it may even help discover the correct condition which a doctor had missed. However it is not able to deliver a diagnosis, always leave that to a medical professional. This actually differs very little from people Googling their symptoms - where the result was the same: take the new information to your medical professional, and remember to get a second opinion (or more) for any serious medical condition, or issues which do not seem to be fully resolved.