Interdisciplinary Inquiry via PanelGPT: Application to Explore Chatbot Application in Sports Rehabilitation

BACKGROUND: ChatGPT showcases exceptional conversational capabilities and extensive cross-disciplinary knowledge. In addition, it possesses the ability to perform multiple roles within a single chat session. This unique multi-role-playing feature positions ChatGPT as a promising tool to explore interdisciplinary subjects. OBJECTIVE: The study intended to guide ChatGPT for interdisciplinary exploration through simulated panel discussions. As a proof-of-concept, we employed this method to evaluate the advantages and challenges of using chatbots in sports rehabilitation. METHODS: We proposed a model termed PanelGPT to explore ChatGPTs’ knowledge graph on interdisciplinary topics through simulated panel discussions. Applied to “chatbots in sports rehabilitation”, ChatGPT role-played both the moderator and panelists, which included a physiotherapist, psychologist, nutritionist, AI expert, and an athlete. We act as the audience posed questions to the panel, with ChatGPT acting as both the panelists for responses and the moderator for hosting the discussion. We performed the simulation using the ChatGPT-4 model and evaluated the responses with existing literature and human expertise. RESULTS: Each simulation mimicked a real-life panel discussion: The moderator introduced the panel and posed opening/closing questions, to which all panelists responded. The experts engaged with each other to address inquiries from the audience, primarily from their respective fields of expertise. By tackling questions related to education, physiotherapy, physiology, nutrition, and ethical consideration, the discussion highlighted benefits such as 24/7 support, personalized advice, automated tracking, and reminders. It also emphasized the importance of user education and identified challenges such as limited interaction modes, inaccuracies in emotion-related advice, assurance on data privacy and security, transparency in data handling, and fairness in model training. The panelists reached a consensus that chatbots are designed to assist, not replace, human healthcare professionals in the rehabilitation process. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to a typical conversation with ChatGPT, the multi-perspective approach of PanelGPT facilitates a comprehensive understanding of an interdisciplinary topic by integrating insights from experts with complementary knowledge. Beyond addressing the exemplified topic of chatbots in sports rehabilitation, the model can be adapted to tackle a wide array of interdisciplinary topics within educational, research, and healthcare settings.