Loblaw's PC Health launches chatbot as more people turn to AI for health info. Here's what to know

Loblaw Companies Limited's PC Health launched an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot earlier this month, and the company says it processed more than 100,000 questions in its first week. Called PC Chat, the tool is trained on Canadian clinical sources, ranging from provincial vaccine guidelines to health charities such as Diabetes Canada to health professional associations. Users who get prescriptions at Shoppers Drug Mart, which is owned by Loblaw, can opt to link their pharmacy records to PC Chat to receive more tailored responses, the company says. Many healthcare professionals and medical technology experts say the chatbot fills the need for more reliable, Canada-specific health information than people get from using a general AI chatbot such as ChatGPT or searching on Google. But they also caution that it's run by a private company with marketing interests and people should read the fine print before agreeing to link their personal data so they understand exactly how it's going to be used, as well as how long their chats will be stored. They also note that government regulation of AI chatbots is far behind the technology itself, so the amount of protection regulations can provide is limited. Lauren Steinberg, executive vice-president and chief digital officer, Loblaw Companies Limited, says marketing wasn't the main motivation, although “when Canadians trust us and feel genuinely helped, they're going to choose to do more with us.”She said the company had “all the pieces here already to do something like this,” including AI engineers and pharmacists across the country who give health advice to Canadians. What do I need to know about PC Chat? The chatbot, which is available at pchealth.ca or the PC Health and Shoppers Drug Mart apps, answers general questions about health and provides links to the sources it drew the information from. “Canadians have been going online with health questions for decades. We've all met and come to know Dr. Google. Increasingly, they're turning to AI to answer the questions that they have,” Steinberg said. Earlier this year, the Canadian Medical Association released survey findings conducted by Abacus Data suggesting that about half of all Canadians are using AI tools to diagnose or treat their health issues. That's despite the fact that only 27% said they trusted AI to provide accurate health information. The CMA, whose chair was part of the advisory committee that worked with PC Health to develop the tool, is among the medical groups that have raised the alarm about potential misinformation in the sources people turn to online. AI tools like ChatGPT draw from many sources across the internet, including some that may be entirely fictional and lead to misinformation, said Muhammad Mamdani, director of the Temerty Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Education in Medicine at the University of Toronto. Mamdani was invited by Loblaw to look at PC Health's chatbot before launch. He said what makes it different from the general chatbots is that it's trained on more than 1,000 Canadian clinical sources.Users can chat anonymously, or sign in using a PC account, which stores their chat history. Patients who get prescriptions at Shoppers Drug Mart can also link their pharmacy history to PC Chat, which means the chatbot can access their health information and use it to provide more tailored information and suggestions. Medication information provided by the chatbot comes from product monographs, said Aaron Cheng, vice-president of digital health for Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart.Cheng said that if users give consent, the chat could also make recommendations for groceries (e.g., healthy items for people with diabetes) and other products available at President's Choice stores. If users provide their location information, PC Chat can find local walk-in clinics and pharmacies. Steinberg said although the chatbot will suggest Shoppers Drug Mart locations, it will direct to a competing pharmacy if there are no Shoppers stores nearby. What are the implications of allowing access to my health information?“The big question is going to be to read the fine print,” Mamdani said. (“It's) so incredibly important for patients to understand, 'what are you going to do with my data?”Like many of the things that we do online and with AI, users need to decide how they want to balance convenience and giving a retailer access to their personal information, he said. “Some people may say, ‘I'm OK with that because it gives me more information, the AI is smarter, it knows me, it's more useful to me, it's more helpful to me. And I actually like being recommended products that I think would benefit me.’ They're not as concerned about the privacy issues,” Mamdani said. “Then you have the other extreme who says, ‘I don't want anybody to know anything about me. I will not accept this.’ Great, you're given that choice. But there's a lot of us in the middle who say, ‘It's not like I don't want it to give me useful information and be helpful and know more about me, but I also don't want to give a for-profit company all my information and I don't know what they're doing with it.’”Mamdani said he sees the chatbot as a valuable resource at a time when many people in Canada don't have immediate access to a healthcare provider to answer basic questions. He also thinks it's a much better alternative for the millions of people who turn to ChatGPT to find medical information, he said. However, there's no question that Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart can make money off of products, such as over-the-counter medications, that they carry in their stores and that PC Chat could recommend, Mamdani said. When asked for a reaction to the launch of PC Chat, the office of Evan Solomon, minister of AI and digital innovation, said it welcomed “innovative Canadian solutions,” and emphasized the importance of earning the trust of people adopting the technology. “Health information is among the most sensitive personal information Canadians have. It should not be used for unrelated commercial purposes without clear and meaningful consent,” Solomon's office said in an email. “Canadians should understand what data they are sharing, how it will be used and whether it will be combined with other information so they can make informed choices about granting access.”How secure is my data?Loblaw says users' personal data is stored in Canada, which means it's protected by Canada's privacy laws. Both the AI minister's office and health data privacy experts said that's a significant security measure. However, like many large organizations and companies in Canada, Loblaw's cloud provider is U.S.-based Google.“Data residency tells you where the servers are. Data sovereignty tells you who can be compelled to open them. Those are two different questions, and only the first one is answered by saying the data stays in Canada,” said Natalie Raffoul, managing partner of Brion Raffoul Intellectual Property Law in Ottawa, in an email.Raffoul said although it's important for consumers to know their data is under the umbrella of a U.S. company, “the realistic risk to any individual user is low.”Cheng said chats will be stored for up to one year, but if a user isn't active in a particular chat for 60 days, it will be deleted then. “This approach is intended to balance data privacy considerations while supporting a more seamless user experience,” he said.But Raffoul said that when it comes to health information, users should have the option to have chats deleted right away. “Retention is the most underrated privacy control there is. Data you no longer hold cannot be breached, cannot be subpoenaed and cannot be disclosed. Every month of retention is a month of exposure that someone chose to accept,” she said. Cheng said that's an option the company might consider implementing in the future. Are there safeguards against the chatbot providing inappropriate advice? Steinberg said the chatbot is not meant to replace health professionals, nor is it to be used in health emergencies.“There are situations where the right answer is to get a professional, get emergency help and we actually designed this experience to make sure that it can recognize that and then, you know, direct people appropriately,” she said. A disclaimer notes the responses may have mistakes and aren't meant to replace medical advice. Cheng said PC Chat is set to default to an “I don't know” answer if the question is beyond the scope of information it draws upon. The chatbot has guardrails in place to shut down conversations and redirect users to seek medical attention or mental health assistance if it detects a risk to the user, he said. The Canadian Press tested a couple of possible scenarios. After a reporter typed, “I'm having chest pains. What should I do?” the chatbot said it was ending the conversation for safety reasons and added, "Sorry, I can't assess this safely here. If you think this may be a medical emergency, call 911 immediately."A question mentioning self-harm or suicide also caused the chatbot to stop the conversation and redirect to other resources including the 988 suicide crisis helpline, 911 and findahelpline.comPC Chat is not available in Quebec or New Brunswick as the company is still working on a French version.

Loblaw's PC Health launches chatbot as more people turn to AI for health info. Here's what to know

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