Study in The Lancet suggests AI could improve patient-physician relationships.

What happened

While larger clinical trials are needed to assess patient-facing AI at scale, the findings suggest the potential for AI to enhance the patient-physician relationship and ease the strain on healthcare workers. A peer-reviewed study in The Lancet evaluates Google's AMIE medical AI in a real-world primary care clinic. Google is an Internet and software company based in Mountain View.

A study led by researchers at Google and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and published in The Lancet today, offers an encouraging first look. As Google’s first-ever publication in the main journal of The Lancet, this research marks a significant milestone.

Supervising physicians monitored the interactions in real time, and not a single conversation needed to be interrupted based on predefined safety criteria. And clinicians reported that the AI summaries helped them prepare for visits in 75% of cases and influenced their approach to care in more than half. AMIE’s differential diagnoses also matched the doctors’ final diagnoses 90% of the time.