New tool may offer prescription ‘safety net’ and reduce the 237m medication errors made each year in England
Drugs are a cornerstone of medicine, but sometimes doctors make mistakes when prescribing them and patients don’t take them properly.
A new AI tool developed at Oxford University aims to tackle both those problems. DrugGPT offers a safety net for clinicians when they prescribe medicines and gives them information that may help their patients better understand why and how to take them.
Doctors and other healthcare professionals who prescribe medicines will be able to get an instant second opinion by entering a patient’s conditions into the chatbot. Prototype versions respond with a list of recommended drugs and flag up possible adverse effects and drug-drug interactions.
“One of the great things is that it then explains why,” said Prof David Clifton, whose team at Oxford’s AI for Healthcare lab led the project.
“It will show you the guidance – the research, flowcharts and references – and why it recommends this particular drug.”
Some doctors already use mainstream generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard) to check their diagnoses and write up medical notes or letters. International medical associations have previously advised clinicians not to use those tools, partly because of the risk that the chatbot will give false information, or what technologists refer to as hallucinations.
