Can Patients Differentiate Between Chatbots and Physicians? Using Conversational AI to Facilitate Provider to Patient Messaging

Hummy Song, Operations, Information and Decisions The Wharton School; Christian Terwiesch, Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School; Hessam Bavafa, Wisconsin School of Business; David Asch, Health Care Management, The Wharton School; Xufei Liu, PhD in Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School

Abstract: Since ChatGPT was introduced, it has passed a Wharton MBA exam, a US Medical Licensing exam, and several law school exams. At the same time, the physician burnout epidemic has not improved as physicians spend more time responding to patient messages, a consequence of the digitization of the workspace. Using chatbots to pre-generate responses for physicians can decrease the amount of time spent messaging patients both during and after work hours. We leverage 8.5 years of patient and provider dialogues and build a language model that enhances provider productivity without compromising the quality of the messages.