Google Tests New Medical AI

SGGPO 11/07/2023 11:12

Tech giant Google is testing a specialized artificial intelligence (AI) program for the medical field, as competition in AI technology with rival Microsoft becomes increasingly fierce.

The chatbot, called Med-PaLM 2, is built on the basis of PaLM 2, Google's latest and most advanced large language model (LLM). With its medical specificity, Med-PaLM 2 is said to be able to provide better quality medical-specific answers than other common chatbots such as Bard, Microsoft's Bing, and OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Some experts believe that Med-PaLM 2 will be very useful in countries with limited access to doctors and nurses. Med-PaLM 2 can perform tasks such as summarizing documents or organizing medical data. Notably, customers who test Med-PaLM 2 will have control over their personal data, which is set up and encrypted for security purposes. Google and the Med-PaLM 2 system will also not be able to access this personal record.

Med-PaLM 2 is expected to be useful in countries with limited access to doctors and nurses. Photo: FirstWorld HEALTHTECH

According to Google senior director of research Greg Corrado, the company is still in the early stages of developing Med-PaLM 2. Doctors and healthcare professionals say programs like Med-PaLM 2 still need further development and testing before they can be used to diagnose patients and recommend treatments.

The Med-PaLM 2 system has been piloted at the Mayo Clinic research hospital in the US since last April. A Google spokesperson declined to disclose the official launch and widespread release date of Med-PaLM 2.

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