Sayak Banerjee, BS.Optom

MS. Optometry Student, Elite School of Optometry, Chennai, India

 

Consider a scenario where individuals could identify their own medical conditions by analysing self-reported symptoms and/or images. Additionally, healthcare professionals can effectively treat various medical ailments even without extensive prior knowledge. Tasks such as drafting hospital discharge letters and scheduling appointments could be automated. While ChatGPT can serve as an asset in the healthcare field, it should be used cautiously as it has the potential to pose risks to patient care.

What is Chat GPT ?

Chat GPT (Open AI, San Francisco, USA) is a generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) powered chatbot ⁽¹⁾  which could process and convert textual and now graphic inputs to text-based outputs. In a simpler way it is like a smart computer program that can talk to you in a natural way and give you helpful answers, just like chatting with a knowledgeable person.

Potential of ChatGPT in several aspects of eye care

ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionise the healthcare sector including branches like optometry and ophthalmology in diverse ways.⁽²⁾

Patients

On performing certain experiments  where some concerns regarding some basic complaints by patients  were asked to Chat GPT . One of the results is shown below:

Figure 1: Example of  real-life conversation of interaction with ChatGPT in the field of Vision science

Here are some of the keynote points I would like to mention :

• Chat GPT is an excellent tool in patient counselling as it gives the patient an idea about the probable cause of the condition he/she is having.
• In addition, ChatGPT is an effective tool in generating patient education materials by translating heavy medical terminology into simplified  and empathetic language tailored to the level of a lay man .
• ChatGPT ‘s multilingual translation feature can further cater multi-ethnic patient population and can potentially be integrated with text to speech audio generation (particularly useful for visually impaired patients) and text to image or video generation platform.

Healthcare  professionals

ChatGPT empowers optometrists and ophthalmologists with curated, synthesised information and guidelines from otherwise diverse  sources thus helping the process  of formulating various differential diagnosis, decision making and treatment plans.

Another most common thing in the eye sector is the use of Electronic medical records. As an AI ChatGPT can scan through  several datasets and help the practitioners in planning effective treatment modalities for the patient.

Research

ChatGPT can bring in new ideas, discovery, and literature reviews. It can effectively assist researchers by analysing several data, literature over the vast internet.

Although there are ethical debates on whether ChatGPT should be recognised as an author in research articles.

Education

The ability of Chat GPT to generate various active learning strategies and quizzes makes it an interesting tool to simulate learning .

Potential risks of ChatGPT in healthcare⁽³⁾

It is very important to understand that some portion of the population may misinterpret the advice and substitute it for a comparatively expensive eye examination.

As a generative AI, ChatGPT generates outputs based on statistical prediction of the text without human-like reasoning. This can potentially result in sweet sounding responses but may be factually  incorrect. Chat GPT can neither take accountability nor abide by any ethical /moral boundaries unlike healthcare practitioners.

Thus, at the end I would like to conclude that Chat GPT being a boon or bane is in our hands. We can make the merits outweigh the demerits. Let us inform our patient and our co-practitioners to use this marvellous yet dangerous tool for the right purposes to keep upgrading the eye sector.

 

References

1. OpenAI. GPT-4 Technical Report. arXiv. 2023:2303.08774. [Url: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08774; Last Accessed:22Aug2023;17:01hrsAEST]
2. Darren Shu Jeng Ting , Ting Fang Tan and Daniel Shu Wei Ting . ChatGPT in ophthalmology: the dawn of a new era. Eyes. 2023;02:619-4.
3. Will ChatGPT transform healthcare? Nat Med. 2023;29:505–6.