Terms such as “artificial intelligence” (AI) and “ChatGPT” are becoming increasingly present in media reports. The rising usage rates of the renowned chatbot ChatGPT suggest that these are no longer just buzzwords, but that these innovative technologies have already become an important part of our everyday lives.

In the next article, I will discuss how medical practices could benefit from the potential of artificial intelligence and ChatGPT in particular. First, I will provide a general introduction to the topic of AI and ChatGPT and then go on to present specific application scenarios for medical practices and other healthcare facilities.

Basics: AI and ChatGPT

Before I delve deeper into the topic of ChatGPT and its possible applications in medical practices, it is important to establish a basic understanding of artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence generally refers to systems or machines that can emulate human-like intelligence. This involves, for example, recognizing language, making decisions or solving problems that normally require human thought.

And now comes ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an example of a chatbot that uses AI or a sub-technology called GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) to generate human-like texts. Through training on millions of Internet texts, ChatGPT has learned to communicate in natural language and respond to a variety of prompts. While conventional chatbots could usually only communicate in very simple language and could only talk about very limited topics, ChatGPT can have really natural-sounding conversations and has a very broad range of knowledge and topics. ChatGPT can not only generate answers to questions, it can also create texts and much more for us. I explained the question “What is ChatGPT?” in more detail in one of my last posts.

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT is, as explained above, AI model developed to have human-like conversations with humans. It is based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture from OpenAI. GPT works by analyzing large amounts of text data and recognizing patterns. It learns by using these patterns to make predictions about the next word or phrase in a text.

ChatGPT uses its ability to understand natural language to analyze the user’s input and generate an appropriate response based on it. It takes into account the context of the previous messages and attempts to provide a meaningful and relevant response.

What are the main functions of ChatGPT

As mentioned above, ChatGPT not only answers simple questions, but can also generate texts and other media content for us. Below are the most important functions that the chatbot already has today.

1. Text generation: ChatGPT can generate text in a human-like manner. This enables the model to respond to user input in natural language.
2. Question-answer system: If you ask the model a question, it tries to give the most suitable answer based on its training.
3. Context understanding: ChatGPT can understand the context of a dialog and generate responses based on this. The model takes into account the previous messages in a conversation to provide contextualized answers.
4. Text translation: Although not primarily designed as a translation tool, ChatGPT can translate text between different languages, but not as accurately as dedicated translation systems.
5. Text summary: ChatGPT can convert long text passages into shorter, summarized forms.
6. Idea generation: The model can provide suggestions or ideas on a given topic.
7. Tutoring: ChatGPT can, to a certain extent, answer educational and information requests and act as a teaching tool for various topics.
8. Code generation and help: It can also answer simple programming questions and generate code examples.
9. Entertainment: The model can tell stories, make jokes and interact in general conversations.
10. Multilingual interaction: ChatGPT can communicate in different languages, although English is the primary and best trained language.

Application examples of ChatGPT in the medical practice

1. patient communication via chatbot

Chatbots that use the ChatGPT language model can create very natural-sounding dialogs and respond to a wide range of questions. This is shown by the Helvetia Insurance chatbot. Such a chatbot can also serve as the first point of contact for patients and their relatives in a doctor’s surgery by answering basic questions about health or providing information about treatments. It can also be used to make appointments or order prescriptions , reducing the administrative burden on medical staff. It is important to note that these types of chatbots, which are mostly based on knowledge from the website or other documents, are very easy and inexpensive for companies to implement.

Incidentally, such a chatbot can be integrated on the website or in WhatsApp. Patients can then contact the doctor’s practice conveniently via WhatsApp and, for example, make appointments or order prescriptions. The doctor’s surgery then receives the patient inquiries directly in its own system and the workload on staff is significantly reduced.

2. answering telephone calls

Of course, nowadays most medical practices are equipped with their own website and a large number of patients take advantage of the chat services provided. Nevertheless, there is still a significant number of patients who prefer to contact their doctor’s practice by telephone. In this respect, ChatGPT can be of great benefit. Providers such as PlaynVoice present phone bot solutions that can be seamlessly integrated and use ChatGPT’s advanced technology in the background. This enables patients to contact the doctor’s surgery by telephone in the conventional way and make appointments, request prescriptions or obtain other information without long waiting times. For more specific and individual inquiries, the bot is also able to connect the caller directly to a member of staff at the practice. Studies indicate that up to 80% of incoming telephone calls can be processed automatically in this way, which significantly reduces the workload of medical staff.

3. preparation of documents of any kind

One of the primary functions of ChatGPT is the generation of texts. Employees of medical institutions can use the chatbot ChatGPT via the official OpenAI website to receive support with texting. This includes, for example, the preparation of employee references, the creation of messages to patients, the writing of blog articles and other specialist articles or the generation of contractual documents. It is essential to emphasize that ChatGPT is not intended to create texts in a fully automated manner. The bot functions more as an aid during the writing process. It is able to reformulate existing texts or provide initial text drafts, which should then be modified and refined by specialist staff. In this article I will show you how ChatGPT can create summaries. This article is about creating blog posts with ChatGPT.

4. health education

A chatbot such as ChatGPT can also be used for health education by providing easy-to-understand information about various diseases, treatments or healthy lifestyles. The chatbot with ChatGPT generally offers 4 advantages:

• The chatbot is available around the clock and interested people do not have to wait.
• The chatbot takes the strain off employees as it can answer many questions independently.
• ChatGPT has the possibility to adapt its tonality exactly to that of the user. The chatbot can therefore communicate “at eye level”.
• There are patients who are reluctant to see a human doctor about shameful issues. Studies show that anonymous communication with a chatbot is sometimes more successful.

5. support of the medical staff

ChatGPT can serve as a “virtual assistant” for employees. For example, employees can give the chatbot notes or key points from a treatment and the chatbot uses these to write a suitable text to document the doctor’s visit. However, data protection and patient privacy must definitely be observed with this application. No direct patient data should be given to ChatGPT, only anonymized information. More on this at the end of this article.

6. marketing and communication

Even if the patient is the primary focus of a medical practice, it is inevitable that employees from communications and marketing will deal with economic and marketing-related topics. ChatGPT can support the creation of social media posts or website texts, for example.

This allows medical staff to return to their main tasks of patient care, and marketing-related tasks can be accelerated with the support of ChatGPT. Prompt engineering plays a particularly important role in this application.

Challenges and concerns when using ChatGPT

Data protection and security aspects when using AI technologies

Of course, when using ChatGPT in the healthcare sector, there are also relevant aspects that need to be considered with regard to data protection and security. In general, all information that employees send to the ChatGPT chatbot is processed by the AI model and can also be used for further AI training purposes. It is therefore advisable not to exchange any sensitive or confidential data with the ChatGPT chatbot. You can ask ChatGPT to write a medical report on a treatment, but you should not share any data about the patient, but anonymize it beforehand. You can also find out more about data protection and ChatGPT in one of my last posts.

Incorrect answers from ChatGPT

The general chatbot ChatGPT is based on a wealth of knowledge from the Internet. Not all information is always correct. It is therefore possible that the chatbot ChatGPT from OpenAI uses an incorrect knowledge source and therefore also produces an incorrect answer. It is therefore important to critically scrutinize all ChatGPT results.

In the application examples mentioned above (examples 3, 5 and 6), this is a relevant aspect that must be taken into account, especially when creating texts with the help of ChatGPT.

If, on the other hand, you use a chatbot or voicebot yourself (application example 1, 2 and 4), this problem is largely eliminated, as you provide the bot with the knowledge sources yourself. You can read more about the implementation of such a bot in my article on generative AI chatbots.

Need for appropriate training and preparation of employees for the use of ChatGPT

To ensure that ChatGPT and AI are used correctly without violating ethical principles or legal rules, your employees need training. It is important that employees understand the opportunities and limitations of the tool and can then use it correctly in appropriate situations.

Conclusion: ChatGPT in the doctor’s office

I think the article shows how well AI and ChatGPT can positively influence the processes and workflows of a medical practice. Of course, there are always certain risks and challenges that we should not underestimate.

All in all, initial discussions with medical practices show that ChatGPT is not just a buzzword or hype topic, but will be used more and more in our everyday (professional) lives in the future.

And now?

Would you like to find out more about ChatGPT or even use AI in your company? Then let’s exchange ideas or maybe I can do a ChatGPT workshop with you?

The easiest way is to send me a short WhatsApp message or an e-mail. Then we can get to know each other and I can find out more about your needs and goals.

I now also offer individual coaching sessions for all those who are still at the very beginning with ChatGPT. Read more about this in my article on the ChatGPT starter course.

By the way, I also offer a ChatGPT Prompt list, especially for the healthcare industry.

Or are you interested in specific AI tools in your medical practice? Then take a look at my Fit with AI offer for the healthcare sector at.