International Journal of General Medicine (May 2023)
The Use of Chatbots in Oncological Care: A Narrative Review
Abstract
Alexander Wang,1,2 Zhiyu Qian,1,2 Logan Briggs,1,2 Alexander P Cole,1,2 Leonardo O Reis,1– 3 Quoc-Dien Trinh1,2 1Division of Urological Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 2Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 3UroScience, School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas, UNICAMP, and Immuno-Oncology Division, Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas, PUC-Campinas, Sao Paulo, BrazilCorrespondence: Quoc-Dien Trinh, Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Division of Urological Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 45 Francis St, ASB II-3, Boston, MA, 02115, USA, Tel +1 617 525-7350, Fax +1 617 525-6348, Email [email protected]: Few reports have investigated chatbots in patient care. We aimed to assess the current applications, limitations, and challenges in the literature on chatbots employed in oncological care.Methods: We queried the PubMed database through April 2022 and included studies that investigated the use of chatbots in different phases of oncological care. The search used five different combinations of the specific terms “chatbot”, “cancer”, “oncology”, and “conversational agent”. Inclusion criteria were chatbot use in any aspect of oncological care—prevention, patient education, treatment, and surveillance.Results: The initial search yielded 196 records, 21 of which met inclusion criteria. The identified chatbots mostly focused on breast and ovarian cancer (n=8), with the second most common being cervical cancer (n=3). Good patient satisfaction was reported among 14 of 21 chatbots. The most reported chatbot applications were cancer screening, prevention, risk stratification, treatment, monitoring, and management. Of 12 studies examining efficacy of care via chatbot, 9 demonstrated improvements compared to standard care.Conclusion: Chatbots used for oncological care to date demonstrate high user satisfaction, and many have shown efficacy in improving patient-centered communication, accessibility to cancer-related information, and access to care. Currently, chatbots are primarily limited by the need for extensive user-testing and iterative improvement before widespread implementation.Keywords: chatbot, conversational agent, artificial intelligence, AI, cancer, oncology
