Using ChatGPT for medical education: the technical perspective

Abstract

Background

The chatbot application Bennie and the Chats was introduced due to the outbreak of COVID-19, which is aimed to provide substitution for teaching conventional clinical history-taking skills. It was implemented with DialogFlow with preset responses, which consists of a large constraint on responding to different conversations. The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, such as the recent introduction of ChatGPT, offers innovative conversational experiences with computer-generated responses. It provides an idea to develop the second generation of Bennie and the Chats. As the epidemic slows, it can become an assisting tool for students as additional exercise. In this work, we present the second generation of Bennie and the Chats with ChatGPT, which provides room for flexible and expandable improvement.

Methods

The objective of this research is to examine the influence of the newly proposed chatbot on learning efficacy and experiences in bedside teaching, and its potential contributions to international teaching collaboration. This study employs a mixed-method design that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative approaches. From the quantitative approach, we launched the world’s first cross-territory virtual bedside teaching with our proposed application and conducted a survey between the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS). Descriptive statistics and Spearman’s Correlation were applied for data analysis. From the qualitative approach, a comparative analysis was conducted between the two versions of the chatbot. And, we discuss the interrelationship between the quantitative and qualitative results.

Results

For the quantitative result, we collected a questionnaire from 45 students about the evaluation of virtual bedside teaching between territories. Over 75% of the students agreed that teaching can enhance learning effectiveness and experience. Moreover, by exchanging patients cases, 82.2% of students agreed that it helps to gain more experiences with diseases that may not be prevalent in their own locality. For the qualitative result, the new chatbot provides better usability and flexibility.

Conclusion

Virtual bedside teaching with chatbots has revolutionized conventional bedside teaching by its advantages and allowing international collaborations. We believe that the training of history taking skills by chatbot will be a feasible supplementary teaching tool to conventional bedside teaching.