Google's AMIE chatbot tested with real primary-care patients in The Lancet study
In a study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, 98 patients talked to Google's research AI AMIE before urgent-care visits under physician supervision; no conversation had to be stopped for safety, and its differential diagnoses matched doctors' final diagnoses 90% of the time.
Google and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) published a real-world study of the research diagnostic chatbot AMIE in The Lancet on 8 October 2026 — Google’s first paper in the journal’s main title.
What the study found
- 98 patients at BIDMC’s ambulatory primary-care clinic chatted with AMIE before urgent-care visits.
- Supervising physicians watched in real time; no conversation had to be interrupted under predefined safety criteria.
- Clinicians said AMIE’s summaries helped them prepare in 75% of cases and influenced their approach in more than half.
- AMIE’s differential diagnoses matched the doctors’ final diagnoses 90% of the time.
Limitations
This was a small, single-centre study with close human supervision, and it is described by Google itself; the company acknowledges that larger clinical trials are needed before patient-facing AI can be used at scale.
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