Google's medical AI chatbot undergoes testing in hospitals

Google's Med-PaLM 2, an AI-powered chatbot designed to provide medical information, is currently being tested in hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic.

Since April, the Mayo Clinic has been exploring the capabilities of Med-PaLM 2, an updated version of the language model known as PaLM 2.

Med-PaLM 2 aims to offer valuable assistance, especially in regions with limited access to doctors. It has been trained on a curated dataset of medical expert demonstrations, enabling it to engage in healthcare conversations more effectively than general chatbots like Bard, Bing, and ChatGPT.

Although Med-PaLM 2 has shown promise, a study published by Google in May revealed that it still faces challenges related to accuracy. Physicians involved in the study reported some inaccuracies and irrelevant information in the responses provided by Med-PaLM and Med-PaLM 2 compared to those from human doctors.

However, Med-PaLM 2 performed well in terms of reasoning, providing consensus-supported answers, and demonstrating correct comprehension.

During the testing phase, customers will have control over their data, which will be encrypted, ensuring privacy and limiting Google's access to it.