CataractBot: An LLM-Powered Expert-in-the-Loop Chatbot for Cataract Patients
This addresses the need for accurate, accessible health information for cataract patients, but it is incremental as it applies existing LLM and chatbot methods to a specific medical domain.
The researchers tackled the problem of providing reliable, expert-endorsed health information to cataract patients by developing CataractBot, an LLM-powered chatbot that queries a curated knowledge base and offers expert-verified responses, which in a deployment study with 49 patients and others demonstrated potential for accessibility, time-saving, and trust-building.
The healthcare landscape is evolving, with patients seeking reliable information about their health conditions and available treatment options. Despite the abundance of information sources, the digital age overwhelms individuals with excess, often inaccurate information. Patients primarily trust medical professionals, highlighting the need for expert-endorsed health information. However, increased patient loads on experts has led to reduced communication time, impacting information sharing. To address this gap, we developed CataractBot. CataractBot answers cataract surgery related questions instantly using an LLM to query a curated knowledge base, and provides expert-verified responses asynchronously. It has multimodal and multilingual capabilities. In an in-the-wild deployment study with 49 patients and attendants, 4 doctors, and 2 patient coordinators, CataractBot demonstrated potential, providing anytime accessibility, saving time, accommodating diverse literacy levels, alleviating power differences, and adding a privacy layer between patients and doctors. Users reported that their trust in the system was established through expert verification. Broadly, our results could inform future work on expert-mediated LLM bots.