New Brunswick patients can now ask an AI app about their recovery

Patients in New Brunswick, Canada, who use a virtual health-care app can now type questions about their recovery and get answers from an AI chatbot. Horizon Health says the feature covers cardiac, surgical and maternity care. It works at any hour, including late at night.

What changed

The feature is called Seamless Answers. It is part of the SeamlessMD app, which helps patients track their recovery after surgery, sends reminders and offers educational resources. Patients can type questions such as "When can I remove my dressing" or "Is this symptom normal?" Horizon launched the app in 2023 and says 7,700 patients have signed up so far.

Vitalité Health Network has also put Seamless Answers in place. According to Horizon, that makes New Brunswick the first province in Atlantic Canada to offer the feature across all health-care regions.

Where the answers come from

The app's co-founder, Dr. Joshua Liu, says the chatbot does not search the open internet. It only draws on the patient education library inside SeamlessMD. That material has been approved by the patient's health-care team. He gave an example: a heart surgery patient at Horizon gets answers based only on content the hospital's heart surgery team has customized and approved.

• Side effects of a medication
• When someone can drive after surgery

Why after hours matters

Jennifer Sheils, Horizon's Chief Innovation Officer, says the tool lets patients get sound information when they cannot reach their care team. Liu says patients often have questions at night or at 3 in the morning, and he sees the tool filling a real gap.

Limits and cautions

Liu says the AI has limits. If a patient says they have a fever and asks what to do, he says it would typically tell them to speak to their nurse. He also says data collected through the answers is stored securely and is not used to train other AI models.

Daniel Lametti, a psychology professor at Acadia University who teaches a course on AI use, says many people already ask medical questions of Google or ChatGPT, so a tool built on doctor-vetted information makes sense. He also warns that any AI system will once in a while produce errors. He says people should understand how these tools work.

What to do

If a hospital offers a tool like this, it can be useful for simple questions when the clinic is closed. For anything about symptoms, call a nurse or your care team. The article does not say how often the tool gets answers wrong.