Patients at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center described their symptoms to Google’s AMIE chatbot before seeing a doctor. The research, published in The Lancet and announced on October 8, tested whether AI could prepare a clinical visit. One hundred adults completed a text conversation, with physicians supervising in real time. No conversation met the study’s criteria for interruption. AMIE’s seven possible diagnoses included the eventual diagnosis in 90% of evaluated cases, a figure that should never be mistaken for a single correct answer every time. Doctors still produced more practical and cost-effective care plans in the researchers’ comparison. This was a small, supervised study at one center.

The doctor receives a summary before meeting the person whose words supplied it. That can spare time spent gathering basic information, while also giving the software an early role in deciding which details appear important. A symptom omitted from the summary may need to be raised again. A confident phrase may invite agreement before an examination begins. These are risks to test as the system moves into larger trials. The useful promise is a better conversation during the appointment, with a clinician checking the account against the patient’s own description. Clinics considering such a tool would need to make correction easy, retain access to the original conversation, and keep time for a patient to explain what the summary missed.