Something interesting we learned while building AI patients

One of the stranger problems with building an AI patient is that AI naturally wants to be helpful. A real patient often isn’t.

If you ask a patient:

“Do you have abdominal pain?”

they shouldn’t automatically respond with their entire history, every associated symptom, their relevant risk factors and a perfectly organized timeline.

They should answer the question you actually asked.

That sounds obvious, but it completely changes the educational value of a simulated case.

If the AI constantly volunteers the important information, the learner isn’t really practicing history taking anymore.

The AI is basically solving the case for them.

So one of the things we’ve been thinking a lot about with Diagnosica is not just:

How do we make the AI smarter?

but:

How do we make it behave more realistically as a patient?

Sometimes that means intentionally making it less helpful.

It’s a surprisingly interesting problem.

If you want to try the case:

Try the app (App store | Google store)

I’d actually be interested to hear from doctors/students: what usually breaks the illusion for you when interacting with an AI patient?