Google's Med-PaLM 2 chatbot enters testing phase in US hospitals

AI in Healthcare

Google's recently created AI tool aimed at providing medical information and advice has entered testing at the Mayo Clinic. Called Med-PaLM 2, the tool is an upgraded version of Google's PaLM 2 language model that aims to answer healthcare related questions.

Med-PaLM 2 was trained on a curated data set of medical expert demonstrations which Google hopes will allow it to outperform existing chatbots in providing healthcare information. While the tool shows promise, issues remain around its accuracy according to Google's research.

However, Med-PaLM 2 performed comparably to human doctors in areas like providing reasoned and consensus supported answers as well as correctly comprehending medical queries.

Though the AI tool could be valuable in regions with limited medical access, Google has ensured customer data used for testing remains encrypted and inaccessible to the company. Google also states Med-PaLM 2 is not intended to replace in-person medical consultations for diagnoses or treatments.