The Use of Chatbots in Oncological Care: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Background

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

Disclosure

QDT reports personal fees from Astellas, Bayer, and Janssen, outside the scope of the submitted work. QDT reports research funding from the American Cancer Society, the Defense Health Agency, and Pfizer Global Medical Grants. APC reports research funding from the American Cancer Society and Pfizer Global Medical Grants. LB reports personal fees from Delfina Inc outside the scope of the submitted work and research funding from the Office of Scholarly Engagement at Harvard Medical School. LOR reports research funding from J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship and Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq, Research Productivity: 304747/2018-1 and 310135/2022-2. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.