Personalization key to patient satisfaction with AI doctors

Artificial intelligence (AI) may one day play a larger role in medicine than the online symptom checkers available today. But these "AI doctors" may need to get more personal than human doctors to increase patient satisfaction, according to a study led by researchers at Penn State. They found that the more social information an AI doctor recalls about patients, the higher the patients' satisfaction, but only if they were offered privacy control.

To see whether a doctor's knowledge of a patient's social or medical history increases patient satisfaction, the researchers asked 382 online participants to interact with a medical chatbot over two visits spaced about two weeks apart. Participants were told that they were interacting with a human doctor, an AI doctor or an AI-assisted human doctor. During the first visit the "doctor" -; in reality, a pre-compiled script that the researchers created for consistency -; chatted with patients about topics related to diet, fitness, lifestyle, sleep and mental health, and asked personal information about their occupation, relationship with their family, dietary habits and favorite activities. Then the doctor offered general recommendations for diet, exercise and mental health management.

During the second visit, the doctor either recalled the patient's medical or personal information or asked the patient to remind them of this information. Then the doctor gave similar health advice as they did in the first visit and offered half the patients the option to put their visit on the record and save their information to the online platform at the conclusion of the final session. Participants then completed an online questionnaire to assess their satisfaction with the service.

The researchers found that patients gave higher scores to AI doctors that recalled the patient's social information as long as the doctor offered privacy control before concluding the visit. The human doctor, on the other hand, did not need to recall either social or medical information for patients to feel that they had a close relationship with the doctor.

The process still requires effort on the patient's part, Sundar added.

"Patients still want the AI system to provide them privacy control," he said. "It's like, as long as you give me control over my data, I appreciate you knowing about my social life and appreciate the effort you put in."

The study has implications for the design of AI systems in the medical field, according to the researchers.

"Recalling patient social information may lead to better satisfaction and patient compliance and more positive health outcomes," Cheng said.

Source:

The Pennsylvania State University

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