ChatGPT Mostly Accurate for Breast Cancer Prevention, Screening Questions

THURSDAY, April 6, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- ChatGPT provides mostly appropriate responses (88 percent) for common questions posed about breast cancer prevention and screening, according to a study published online April 4 in Radiology.

Hana L. Haver, M.D., from University of Maryland Medical Intelligent Imaging Center in Baltimore, and colleagues assessed the appropriateness of ChatGPT responses to 25 common questions about breast cancer prevention and screening.

The researchers found that ChatGPT-generated responses were appropriate for 22 of 25 questions (88 percent) in both contexts. Only one question was judged inappropriate by fellowship-trained breast radiologists and was related to scheduling mammography in relation to COVID-19 vaccination. Two questions were judged as unreliable in both contexts and were related to breast cancer prevention and where one could obtain breast cancer screening.

"ChatGPT has great potential to automate provision of accurate health care information related to breast cancer prevention and screening. However, physician oversight when using these tools is critical, given the presence of inappropriate and inconsistent responses, consistent with previously cautioned pitfalls of ChatGPT in the context of radiology," the authors write. "We encourage future study in the promising technologies of large language models to improve how healthcare education and counseling are delivered."

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