Why you shouldn’t use AI to evaluate your medical negligence claim
If you’ve experienced substandard medical care, it’s natural to want answers quickly. Our Medical Negligence team has noticed a growing number of people coming to us after uploading their medical records to AI tools like ChatGPT to try and get an idea of what their claim might be worth.
In this blog, Helen Franklin, Partner in our Medical Negligence team, looks at the risks of using AI tools to assess and estimate your medical negligence claim.
The risks of using AI to assess your claim
It’s an understandable instinct: AI feels instant and free, and provides quick reassurance and validation, especially compared to picking up the phone to a solicitor. While our lawyers see the benefits of AI for many things, asking ChatGPT to summarise your medical records or ask if you have a medical negligence claim and its estimated value is something we’d strongly advise against, for two important reasons.
1. Your medical records are sensitive, and AI tools don’t protect them the way a solicitor does
When you instruct a lawyer, whether in a medical negligence claim, for conveyancing or any other area of law, your information is covered by professional confidentiality obligations and strict data protection rules. You know exactly who has access to it, how it’s stored, and why.
The same isn’t true when you paste medical records into AI. Once that information is out there, you have little visibility over how it’s stored, whether it’s used to train the model further, or who else might be able to find it. Medical records are among the most sensitive personal data there is, and it’s simply not worth the risk for a rough estimate.
In addition, asking AI to review medical records and identify areas of negligence often comes up with misleading allegations that hold no actual weight within litigation. AI cannot understand the difference between potential poor care and negligent care. This is done through careful evaluation using the combined knowledge of lawyers and medical experts.
2. There’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ compensation figure
Even setting privacy aside, the valuations AI tools produce are not reliable. Compensation in medical negligence cases depends on a combination of factors that are specific to you and your circumstances, including:
- The severity of the injury and your prognosis
- The impact on your ability to work and carry out daily life
- Any ongoing or future care needs
- Financial losses, both past and future
- How similar cases have been valued by the courts
AI tools work by matching your situation (via what you’ve put in) against generic ranges pulled from publicly available information. They can’t apply legal judgement to the detail of your case in the way a solicitor can, and they have no way of knowing what makes your circumstances different from someone else’s. Only an experienced lawyer can understand the nuances of your situation and apply the relevant case law and instruct the appropriate experts to explore whether the case has merits and, if so, properly advise of value in the specific situation. Read more about the risks of using AI for legal advice here.
Why this matters more than it might seem
The risk of using AI to calculate compensation isn’t just that the figure is wrong; it’s what happens next. People often come to us having already fixed an expectation in their mind based on a number ChatGPT has given them, which can be wildly unrealistic. When the real assessment doesn’t match that figure, it can make an already difficult conversation harder.
This is a real shame, and not just for the individual. Medical negligence claims play an important role in improving patient safety more broadly. When something goes wrong in someone’s care, a claim can prompt investigation and accountability that leads to changes in how a hospital or practice operates, changes that could prevent the same mistake from happening to someone else. Deciding not to pursue a valid claim based on an inaccurate AI estimate doesn’t just affect the person who was let down; it could mean a genuine safety issue goes unexamined.
None of this is because AI tools are being deliberately misleading. It’s simply that compensation isn’t something that can be calculated from a template. It must be assessed properly, case by case.
Get in touch with our medical negligence solicitors
If you’d like to talk through a potential medical negligence claim, our expert team is here to help. Contact us on 0117 325 2929 or via our enquiry form for a confidential initial conversation.
