Overview of GAI Tools for Doctors
Dozens of AI tools are now available, but we’ll focus on three key ones you might hear about or find useful: OpenAI’s ChatGPT DeepSeek, and Perplexity AI. Each has its own strengths and ideal use cases for clinicians. Here’s a quick overview and how they can help with tasks like clinical documentation, patient education, and staying up-to-date.
How it works
This is the AI that started the recent hype. Launched in late 2022, ChatGPT is a conversational AI developed by OpenAI in the USA. Think of it as a very advanced chatbot – you type in a prompt or question, and it responds with a human-like answer. ChatGPT was trained on a broad swath of the internet (books, articles, websites) and is considered the world’s leading AI language model in terms of popularity and capabilities as of early 2025. It’s known for giving detailed, fluent answers on just about any topic. For doctors, ChatGPT can be a handy general-purpose assistant:
Drafting and writing: You can have it compose referral letters, create diet plans for patients, or even pen an email to your clinic staff. For example, “Write a referral letter to a cardiologist for a patient with unstable angina” can yield a decent first draft that you then tweak to add specifics.
Summarizing information: Paste a chunk of text (like a guideline excerpt or a research abstract) and ask for a summary. It will usually produce a concise digest of the key points.
Brainstorming and explanation: You can discuss with ChatGPT as if it were a colleague. Ask it clinical questions (“What are possible causes of chronic cough?”) or to explain something in layman’s terms (“Explain what an MRI is in simple language”). It’s like having a very knowledgeable (but sometimes overly talkative) junior doctor to bounce ideas off
Limitations: Importantly, ChatGPT does not browse the live internet by default, so its knowledge may be up to a certain cutoff (previous models were mostly up to 2021-2022 info). It might not know the latest Malaysian Clinical Practice Guidelines by default, or recent journal articles, unless you provide that info in your prompt. There is however s Search button which you can enable to overcome this issue. Also, ChatGPT tends to not cite sources in its answers and can sometimes “hallucinate” – meaning it might fabricate facts or references that sound plausible but are not correct For example, if you ask it for a study reference, it might make up a journal citation that looks real but isn’t! So, while it’s useful for quick answers, you should verify any critical information it gives
DeepSeek: This is the rising star of AI models and is often compared to ChatGPT. DeepSeek launched in early 2025 out of Hangzhou, China Despite being built at a fraction of the cost of ChatGPT (reportedly around $6 million vs. OpenAI’s $100+ million investment) DeepSeek shocked observers with its impressive capabilities It uses a different architecture called a “mixture of experts” model, which essentially means it searches a narrower subset of its knowledge relevant to your query rather than combing everything . This makes it efficient and often just as effective for answering questions.
Why does DeepSeek matter to doctors? Firstly, because it’s newer, it was trained on more recent data (up to 2024), so it may have more up-to-date medical knowledge built-in. In fact, DeepSeek’s popularity in China led to anecdotes like a doctor being corrected by a patient who used DeepSeek – the patient found that a guideline had been updated, which the doctor hadn’t realized! This story highlights how DeepSeek’s up-to-date reasoning can potentially catch things even experienced clinicians might miss if they haven’t read the latest literature. DeepSeek is also known for more advanced reasoning, meaning it might handle complex multi-part questions or logic puzzles better.
In practical terms, if you ask a detailed question like, “Given a 55-year-old patient with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease, what blood pressure target do current guidelines recommend, and why?”, a tool like DeepSeek may provide a nuanced answer incorporating the latest guidelines and rationale. It’s like ChatGPT’s brainy cousin who read all the newest journals last night. Some early comparisons have found DeepSeek’s responses to be more engaging and specific – for example, when asked to write an elevator pitch for a telehealth startup, DeepSeek produced a more compelling and example-filled answer than ChatGP
Deepseek has Internet search capabilities but you need to enable the Search button. The advance reasoning also requires you to enable the DeepThink button.
Perplexity
Unlike ChatGPT and DeepSeek which are standalone AI models, Perplexity is more of an AI-powered search engine. Think of Perplexity as Google married to ChatGPT. You ask it a question in plain language, and it not only gives you an answer but also shows you the sources from which that answer is drawn. This is fantastic for anyone in medicine, where having sources and evidence is crucial. Perplexity will present a concise answer and alongside it will list references (with links) – these could be journal articles, websites, or guidelines. It’s been called one of the best AI search engines for real-time questions
Use cases for doctors: If you want a quick, referenced answer to a question – say, “What are the new 2023 Malaysian Clinical Practice Guidelines recommendations for H. pylori treatment?” – Perplexity can be extremely handy. It might return an answer like, “The latest guideline recommends regimen X as first-line therapy【source】, especially given rising clarithromycin resistance【source】.” You’ll see the little source links, which you can click to read more (maybe it found the actual guideline PDF or a summary of it). This way, you not only get an answer but you can immediately verify it by reading the cited sources, helping you stay evidence-based. Many clinicians use Perplexity to save time compared to manually Googling and sifting through results.
Another neat feature: Perplexity has special modes (like “Academic” for scholarly sources, “Web” for broad search, etc.) and even allows you to upload PDFs (like journal articles or clinical guidelines) for the AI to analyze. Imagine having a lengthy Lancet paper – you could upload it and ask Perplexity, “Summarize the key findings of this study,” and get a quick digest. You can also ask follow-up questions in a chat-like interface. It’s a very direct way to do literature review with AI assistance. Perplexity’s interface is user-friendly: no account needed for basic use, just go to the website and ask away. (Creating a free account unlocks features like saving your history or using it on mobile apps.)
Staying up-to-date: Because Perplexity is essentially performing live searches, it’s great for staying current. If there was a medical news yesterday (e.g., a new drug approval or a new study in NEJM), Perplexity will likely find it if you ask. In contrast, default ChatGPT might not know about it unless specifically told. So many GPs use tools like Perplexity to complement ChatGPT/DeepSeek: ChatGPT/DeepSeek for in-depth generative answers and brainstorming, and Perplexity for quick facts with citations.
To summarize the trio: ChatGPT is like your all-around assistant for writing and general queries (very fluent but sometimes must be fact-checked); DeepSeek is the new specialist with up-to-date knowledge and sharp reasoning (great potential for clinical queries); Perplexity is your AI librarian, fetching answers with references. In practice, you might use all three depending on the task at hand. For example, you could draft a patient letter in ChatGPT, ask DeepSeek a complicated diagnostic question, and verify a medication dose using Perplexity.
Bonus: There are also healthcare-specific AI tools emerging. For instance, locally in Malaysia, Qmed Asia’s “Ask CPG” is an AI feature that lets doctors query the Malaysian Clinical Practice Guidelines database in natural language. This kind of tailored tool shows how GAI is being adapted to our local context, giving relevant answers aligned with Ministry of Health guidelines. Such tools can be invaluable for quick reference during practice..