From the Summary Podcast - Consulting Dr ChatGPT

While a search engine is the first port of call for more than a third of surveyed Australians, other online options are becoming more popular.

Dr Andy Papa-Adams is HBF chief medical officer.

Doctor, your research shows, for now at least, Dr Google is still king.

Yes, that's right.

So what we found in the research that was commissioned by HPF and done by Ipsos was that very much people are still looking to Dr. Google.

We found that about 18% of Australians are looking to AI before consulting a health professional.

And when you're looking at millennials and Gen Z, that actually rises to 30%.

You mentioned the age gap there or the age groups there.

It is quite a significant difference from millennial right to baby boomers in terms of who's willing to trust online advice.

Yes, it was, which I guess wasn't unexpected.

Only about half of baby boomers said that they would consult a healthcare professional before any online source.

I guess that kind of fits in with the fact that the generations that have grown up with the internet and being able to have information at their fingertips, they're the ones going to the online sources first.

Absolutely.

Although the figures show that millennials are slightly higher than Gen Z in some of those online fronts.

So that younger generation who are even more digital natives may be a little bit more apprehensive.

Yeah.

And look, we didn't

kind of dig in any deeper as to why that might be.

But I guess we are getting our information from different sources now.

And obviously, you know, social media is having a massive impact on where people get their health information.

And that could be one of those reasons.

And so there is still a growing number of people who are turning to artificial intelligence, asking a chatbot, hey, this is what's wrong with me.

You know, what do you reckon?

Yes.

Yeah, that's right.