The newest members of many medical teams are chatbots—computer programs designed to simulate human conversation. No matter how compassionate the answers may sound, chatbots do not care about you because they are incapable of “caring”! Besides that, they have no responsibility for their impact on you.

With those two facts in mind, chatbots can be useful in optimizing your care. Three tips for using them to learn about your condition or make decisions about your care:

Be specific when posing questions
- Clarify your medical situation with all key details
- Ask specific questions
- Specify wanting answers based on recent info (e.g., “after 2019” or “the past 2 years”) and only from reputable medical centers.
- Ask for links to the info source.
Never provide personal info (names, addresses, or other personal identifiers)
Consider chatbots as supplemental—and not as a replacement for your healthcare team

Chatbots can help you prepare for visits by:

Familiarizing you with basic terms and facts about your condition and treatment options.
Helping you prepare a list of questions.

Chatbots help or harm, depending on whether their information is accurate AND applies to you, and how you use it. If information differs from what your healthcare team says, discuss it with your healthcare team—especially if tempted to go against medical advice.