Should You Use ChatGPT for Health Information?

 

There are many uses of artificial intelligence (AI). For example, using generative models, AI can produce text, images, videos, audio, software code or other forms of data. These models learn the underlying patterns and structures of their training data and use them to produce new data based on prompts.

The major generative AI tools include conversational chatbots such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Grok and DeepSeek. They generate responses to questions you ask it using language model processing. 

Using one of these chatbots for medical purposes may have several benefits:

** Accessibility, free cost, and convenience - If you have an internet connection, you can use chatbot to gather health information about symptoms, treatments and prevention strategies for health conditions quickly at low cost without waiting for an appointment. Thus it is an educational tool.

** Provides a sense of anonymity and privacy that you might not feel when interacting with a doctor. This can make you feel more at ease speaking about personal health information if you usually feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. 

** Help translate complex health information into simpler terms, such as explaining possible reasons for symptoms in plain language. This can make it particularly useful if you have received a diagnosis for a health condition and want to learn more about possible treatment options and any warning signs to watch for. 

** Supporting you between doctor visits because it may: 

Ø   Help monitor symptoms and treatment progression.

Ø   Provide emotional support, coping strategies, self-help techniques and prevention advice. Thus it may be an effective tool for managing feelings of stress and anxiety.

Ø   Set up medication and appointment reminders.

Ø   Can also translate medical information from one language to another. This may be useful if you do not fully understand an aspect of your management plan or want to formulate questions for your next doctor’s appointment. 

** It may play a role in summarizing medical records. 2025 research found that it helped reduce administrative time to complete medical summaries by around 70%.

However, healthcare professionals do not recommend using AI chatbot as a self-diagnosis tool because it does not always provide accurate, reliable and personalized information, and precise diagnosis. While it may provide general health information, this may not be useful for your personal situation.

And so it is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Along with possible medical inaccuracies, this may be due to the following reasons:

@  It does not provide reliable, up-to-date, consistent answers to the same queries.

@  It cannot process visual data.

@  It has limited emotional intelligence, so it may not be able to engage with you to “understand” your health history and personal circumstances.

@  Chatbots are not a human. They often lack the empathy, compassion and assurance that you might get from a human.  

@  It may have potential biases due to the information it has been trained on. AI chatbots generate responses by scraping through the sources they have been trained on. But they are not always trained with reputable medical journals, so the information they use may come from sources that have not been reviewed by certified medical professionals. 

@  They can also create false information or sources that do not exist, known as “hallucinations.” These false claims are hard to spot. While it can make responses appear more authoritative, it can actually mask deficits in the content and create a false sense of knowledge, confidence and reliability.

Research from 2025 found that ChatGPT’s medical accuracy ranges between 20% and 95% in relatively general situations. The researchers concluded that ChatGPT should not be used alone to make a medical diagnosis.

Here are some tips to help optimize your prompt for health information:

@  Be specific: Providing clear, concise, and specific information or questions will help the language model answer your question.

@  Give context: Provide as much context as possible, including how you feel, any symptoms you experience, medications you take, lifestyle and dietary habits, and so on.

@  Set the tone: You can ask AI chatbots to provide answers in a specific tone to help you better understand complexities.

@  Validate sources: Ask for reputable medical journal sources, the date on the information they provide and double-check their validity on trusted sources.

In most cases, you will have to refine your initial prompt based on the bot’s reply to get the best response possible.

If you have any concerns about your healthcare, it is crucial to connect with a medical professional. They can fully assess your personal, family, and medical history, and perform a physical examination to help determine whether you need further testing. According to a 2024 research review, trust in healthcare contexts is often built in face-to-face conversations with doctors, medical specialists and nurses.