Recruitment in a research study via chatbot versus telephone outreach: a randomized trial at a minority-serving institution

Abstract

Chatbots are software applications to simulate a conversation with a person. The effectiveness of chatbots in facilitating the recruitment of study participants in research, specifically among racial and ethnic minorities, is unknown. The objective of this study is to compare a chatbot versus telephone-based recruitment in enrolling research participants from a predominantly minority patient population at an urban institution. We randomly allocated adults to receive either chatbot or telephone-based outreach regarding a study about vaccine hesitancy. The primary outcome was the proportion of participants who provided consent to participate in the study. In 935 participants, the proportion who answered contact attempts was significantly lower in the chatbot versus telephone group (absolute difference −21.8%; 95% confidence interval [CI] −27.0%, −16.5%; P < 0.001). The consent rate was also significantly lower in the chatbot group (absolute difference −3.4%; 95% CI −5.7%, −1.1%; P = 0.004). However, among participants who answered a contact attempt, the difference in consent rates was not significant. In conclusion, the consent rate was lower with chatbot compared to telephone-based outreach. The difference in consent rates was due to a lower proportion of participants in the chatbot group who answered a contact attempt.

The Intersection of ChatGPT, Clinical Medicine, and Medical Education

“…It is worth mentioning that researchers have explored the use of generative language models in health care prior to the launch of ChatGPT. For example, a generative language model has been used in COVID-19 public health response [15], explanation of treatment process to stakeholders [16], patient self-management [17], mental health screening [18], research participant recruitment [19], research data collection [20].…”

“…Despite current limitations, a growing body of research suggests that ChatGPT and other chatbots can be trained to generate logical and informational context in medicine. Some potential applications of ChatGPT in clinical medicine and medical education are summarized in Table 2 [12,19,[23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Chatbots in Mental Health: A Systematic Review

“…The majority of the papers discussed techniques for identifying and diagnosing mental health problems as well as for anticipating and comprehending psychological health concerns. The most frequent methods used sensor data [52], electronic health record data [53,54], or text [55] to predict future suicide risks. A few examples contain the examination of suicide notes as well as later periods [56].…”