Health Thursday, 06 August 2026

Local doctors respond to AI Warning over patient diagnosis

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Local doctors respond to AI Warning over patient diagnosis

NICK NIKOLAIDIS | LOCAL doctors have responded to Australian Medical Association’s (AMA) warning about the proliferation of misinformation and distrust in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The AMA says patients are using AI self-diagnose and is concerned about the effect they believe this will have on health care, a concern shared by local health experts.

It follows the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) earlier this saying that doctors are increasingly spending appointments to dispel mistruths their patients are encountering online.

This is not a new phenomenon; Dr Google has long been a headache for medical practitioners due to the algorithm tending to favour sensationalism and being unable to consider the severity of symptoms, how a patient is otherwise presenting, and medical history.

Well-meaning patients are then left with inaccurate conclusions and unnecessary panic which can clog waiting rooms and Emergency Departments.

But AI has accelerated the problem. In just seconds a bad faith actor can generate false evidence; fake medical journals, fake news sources, even photos, which look credible and spread like a virus infecting panic into patients.

It goes both ways; shonks selling ‘cures’ or ‘treatments’ backed up by false evidence, to conspiracy theorists attempting to stymie genuine medical progress (as was seen during COVID).

There is also the risk of ‘AI Hallucination’ where models generate false information as absolute fact and supported by false sources, which could have severe even lethal consequences when giving medical advice.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is trying to get ahead of community concern, recently launching ‘ChatGPT Health’ in the United States.

The service allows users to connect Apple Health and supported medical records which in theory could provide better information and advice.

But this has raised concerns about the storage of sensitive information which could be the target of a largescale hack, as well as the risk of bad advice supported by hallucinations; in May a California teenager was advised by ChatGPT to consume a fatal concoction of substances.

There is no timeline for a ChatGPT Health launch in Australia.

As a result of increased concern in the medical community, the AMA has taken to update its ‘Role of the Doctor’ statement to emphasise that while AI can be used to enhance care, it is not a substitute for trained clinical judgement.

Doctors must continue to oversee and safeguard the algorithms and digital tools that they may use.The AMA sees one role of these tools to be reducing the administrative burden on doctors to free up more time for patient care.

Dr Danielle McMullen, President of the AMA said: “At a time when misinformation spreads faster than facts, patients need [Doctors] they can trust to explain what the evidence shows and what it means for them.

“That trust is earned through years of medical education, supervised training, and ongoing professional development.”

Western Sydney doctor, Dr Hani Bittar said: “We are already using AI to script medical appointments, which creates excellent records. The? problem emerges when using it as a primary diagnosis tool.

“We have seen a moderate rise in presentations of patients who have received alarmist advice from AI or the internet.

“Unnecessary presentations can increase waiting times and reduce capacity for patients with the more serious care needs.”