My Labs, Artificial Intelligence, and Me
“I loaded all my blood work into ChatGPT. I know you hate that,” she said. She was a new patient, so we were still getting to know each other. I told her what I tell all my patients, “I don’t hate that, it’s your data. But you should never have to worry alone.”
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a familiar health-information tool. With a few clicks, patients can upload laboratory reports and receive an explanation of their results in plain language. Here in Colorado, patients receive their lab results at the same time as their doctor. Many times, it seems easier to upload them than to wait for a response from the office. Most of the time this is a good thing; patients get a baseline understanding from AI which can help them have a more meaningful discussion with their physician. But laboratory reports contain sensitive medical information, and AI-generated interpretations can be incomplete, misleading, or simply wrong.
Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, American College of Physicians, and American Academy of Family Physicians, generally support the responsible use of AI as a tool to augment healthcare. At the same time, they emphasize that AI should not replace professional judgment, and that its use must include transparency, privacy protections, appropriate oversight, and continued evaluation for accuracy and bias.
Before uploading your results, it is important to understand both the potential value and the risks.
How AI Can Help
One of AI’s greatest strengths is its ability to translate medical terminology into more understandable language. A laboratory report may contain dozens of abbreviations, reference ranges, and unfamiliar measurements. AI can explain what a test generally measures, why it might have been ordered, and what common causes of an abnormal result may include.
AI may also help you:
- Organize a long or complicated laboratory report
- Compare and graph current results with previous values
- Identify trends that may be worth discussing
- Generate questions for your next medical appointment
- Summarize results in a more accessible format
- Translate medical explanations into another language
For someone trying to understand a new diagnosis or prepare for an appointment, these functions can be genuinely useful. AI can help doctors and patients “speak the same language.”
Laboratory Results Require Context
The most important limitation is that laboratory values cannot always be interpreted in isolation.
A result may be affected by altitude, hydration, recent exercise, fasting status, medications, supplements, or the time of day the specimen was collected. Different laboratories may also use different testing methods and reference ranges.
A value marked “high” or “low” is not automatically evidence of disease. Likewise, a result within the laboratory’s reference range is not always optimal or reassuring for a particular patient. For example, a mildly elevated liver enzyme could reflect medication use, recent strenuous exercise, alcohol exposure, a viral illness, or liver disease. A low ferritin level may be more clinically meaningful in a patient with fatigue or blood loss than in someone without symptoms. Kidney function estimates may also require consideration of age, muscle mass, medications, and trends over time.
Unless that context is provided, AI may produce an explanation that sounds confident but does not fit the individual patient. Patients may try to supply context, but might not always be aware of the appropriate clinical context to provide. For example, many patients forget to tell me that they are supplementing with creatine. This is a supplement that supports muscle growth, but effects kidney lab numbers without effecting kidney function. Patients may also inadvertently steer AI in the wrong direction by starting with a condition that they are worried about and asking if the labs support that diagnosis.
The American College of Physicians states that AI-enabled technologies should complement rather than replace physician decision-making. ACP also recommends that these tools undergo continuing evaluation for safety and effectiveness and contain appropriate accountability and oversight mechanisms.²
AI Can Be Wrong—Convincingly Wrong
Consumer AI systems are generally designed to generate useful language, not to establish a diagnosis. They may misread a scanned report, confuse units, overlook a trend, apply an inappropriate reference range, or invent an explanation that is not supported by the data. This is sometimes called an AI “hallucination.”
The polished tone of an AI response can make inaccurate information appear authoritative. That creates two opposing risks:
- False reassurance: AI may minimize a result that requires prompt medical attention.
- Unnecessary alarm: AI may provide a long list of serious diseases for a minor or temporary abnormality.
AI may also miss relationships among results. This is especially true when a multi-step question is asked. For example, AI can provide a straightforward answer to the question “What is Bilirubin”. But the question “Is Bilirubin dangerous?” is a much more complicated question. A human would hear the implied “dangerous to me?”, but a computer does not. Similarly, the question “How can I lower my bilirubin?” is much more complicated—pathways to lowering bilirubin depend on why the bilirubin is high in the first place.
For these reasons, AI should not be used to diagnose a condition, determine that an abnormality is harmless, change a prescription, or decide whether urgent evaluation is necessary.
Your Laboratory Report Contains More Than Numbers
A laboratory report commonly includes your name, date of birth, medical-record number, address, ordering clinician, healthcare organization, collection dates, diagnoses, and insurance information. Even if you are interested in only one result, uploading the entire document may disclose a substantial amount of identifying information.
Important: Protecting Your Privacy
Many people assume that any company handling health information must comply with HIPAA, the law that governs health information privacy. That is not necessarily true. HIPAA generally applies to covered healthcare entities and their business associates. Information that a consumer voluntarily enters into a general-purpose app or AI service may fall outside HIPAA’s protections, even if the information originally came from a physician or hospital. Other consumer-protection and state privacy laws may still apply, but their protections are not identical. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services explains this distinction in its guidance on health information entered into consumer apps.
Depending on the service and its settings, uploaded information may be retained, reviewed, used to improve products, or shared with vendors. Privacy policies can also change. Although the Federal Trade Commission’s Health Breach Notification Rule applies to certain health apps and other services outside HIPAA, breach-notification requirements do not prevent a breach from occurring. FTC guidance describes these protections and their limitations.
Once sensitive information has been uploaded, it may be difficult—or impossible—to guarantee that every copy has been deleted.
How to Use AI More Safely
Before uploading laboratory data, consider the following precautions:
- Remove identifying information. Delete or cover your name, birth date, address, medical-record number, account numbers, barcodes, clinician information, and healthcare-facility details. Remember that document metadata may also contain identifying information.
- Share only what is necessary. If you have a question about three results, enter those values, units, and reference ranges rather than uploading an entire medical record.
- Consider the Sources. Some AI models gather data across the internet, meaning that they may pull information from private individuals or marketing companies. Others, such as OpenEvidence, pull exclusively from medical research and high quality sources such as the New England Journal of Medicine.
- Review the privacy policy. Determine whether the company stores your data, uses it to train models, permits human review, shares it with third parties, or allows you to delete it. Look for temporary-chat or data-retention controls.
- Provide relevant context without identifying yourself. Age range, sex, symptoms, fasting status, medications, supplements, recent illness, pregnancy status, and important medical conditions may materially change the interpretation.
- Include units and laboratory reference ranges. A number without its units and the reporting laboratory’s range can be dangerously misleading.
- Ask AI to explain, not diagnose. A safer prompt might be: “Explain what these tests generally measure, identify patterns I should ask my physician about, and tell me what additional context would be needed. Do not diagnose me.”
- Verify important claims. Ask your clinician or pharmacist before changing medications, supplements, diet, or follow-up plans.
- Do not delay urgent care. Severe symptoms, including chest pain, difficulty breathing, confusion, fainting, major bleeding, or rapidly worsening illness, require appropriate medical evaluation regardless of what an AI tool says.
Never Worry Alone: AI as a Useful Assistant, Not a Final Authority
AI can be an effective educational partner. It can make laboratory reports less intimidating, reveal questions you may not have considered, and help you prepare for a more productive medical visit. Its best role is to improve understanding, not to replace clinical judgment.
The safest approach is to treat an AI interpretation as a preliminary explanation that must be checked against your medical history and reviewed with a qualified healthcare professional. Before uploading anything, ask two questions: “Am I comfortable sharing this information with this company?” and “Would I make a medical decision based on this answer without professional verification?”
For most people, the right balance is not to avoid AI completely, but to use it selectively: remove identifying details, disclose only what is necessary, understand the platform’s privacy practices. And when in doubt, talk to your doctor. Virtual visits are a great resource for discussing lab results; you get the undivided attention of your doctor without having to travel into the office. Vail Health offers virtual visits through both our traditional primary care department and our Concierge Medicine department. We’re here to support you, not just your numbers.
AI disclosure: Generative AI was used for editorial assistance, including organization and language refinement. All medical content and references were reviewed and approved by the author.
Bibliography:
- Artificial Intelligence in the Provision of Health Care: An American College of Physicians Policy Position Paper, Annals of Internal Medicine
