Google's medical AI chatbot is already being tested at medical institutions

The large-scale language model ' PaLM 2 ' announced by Google in May 2023 has already been introduced in various Google services, as well as ' Med-PaLM 2 ' trained with health data and cyber security-related models. Different versions are also under development, such as Sec-PaLM 2 , which was trained on data from According to the Wall Street Journal report, it is clear that 'Med-PaLM 2' has already started testing at some medical institutions.

In Battle With Microsoft, Google Bets on Medical AI Program to Crack Healthcare Industry - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-battle-with-microsoft-google-bets-on-medical-ai-program-to-crack-healthcare-industry-bb7c2db8

Google's medical AI chatbot is already being tested in hospitals - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/8/23788265/google-med-palm-2-mayo-clinic-chatbot-bard-chatgpt

At the Google I / O held in May 2023, Google announced `` PaLM 2 '', the next-generation version of the large-scale language model (LLM) `` PaLM '' that the company is developing. PaLM 2 can demonstrate excellent performance in various tasks including inference, multilingual translation, and coding, and has been introduced in 25 types of Google services including Google search at the time of announcement.

Google announces large-scale language model 'PaLM 2', already installed in 25 Google services - GIGAZINE

According to emails exchanged within Google, independently obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Google believes that Med-PaLM 2 is ``especially useful in countries where access to doctors is more restricted''. Because Med-PaLM 2's training data uses questions and answers from medical licensing exams, it is believed to be better able to handle medical-related conversations than the company's general-purpose chatbots Bard and ChatGPT. .

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Google is testing Med-PaLM 2 at some medical institutions, such as the Mayo Clinic, from around April 2023.

Google isn't the only company planning to bring AI to the healthcare industry, but big tech companies like Microsoft and IBM, as well as smaller startups, are also doing research in the field. It has already been reported that AI can reduce the burden of document creation, which is one of the tasks of doctors.

AI helps doctors avoid burnout by reducing the burden of document creation that takes hours a day - GIGAZINE

Med-PaLM 2 is an AI chatbot that can generate answers to medical questions and can be used to organize large amounts of health data.

According to the paper on Med-PaLM 2, Med-PaLM 2 still has accuracy-related problems already seen in other LLMs, for example, some of the answers Med-PaLM 2 outputs say ' 'In some cases, they may be more inaccurate than other doctors' answers, or contain irrelevant information.'

Nevertheless, we found that Med-PaLM 2 could perform as well as real-world physicians on nearly every measure, showing evidence of inference, giving consensus answers, and showing no signs of misunderstanding. shown.

Med-PaLM 2, our expert-level medical LLM | Research Bytes-YouTube


According to a Wall Street Journal report, data about patients participating in the Med-PaLM 2 test is encrypted, and Google can no longer access that data. A Google spokesperson also declined to say when the program to introduce Med-PaLM 2 into medical settings will be more widely available.

According to Greg Collard, Google's senior research director who was involved in the development of Med-PaLM 2, Med-PaLM 2, which has already been tested in medical settings, is still in the early stages of development and needs to be understood by customers. It is said that it is at the stage of developing in cooperation with medical institutions etc. in order to do so.

Corrado told The Wall Street Journal, 'I'm not at the point where I want this kind of technology in healthcare for my family. We believe we can expand the area of potential benefit by a factor of 10.'