More than Decision Support: Exploring Patients' Longitudinal Usage of Large Language Models in Real-World Healthcare-Seeking Journeys
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866915812853415936 |
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| author | Cao, Yancheng Ji, Yishu Fu, Chris Yue Dharmavaram, Sahiti Turchioe, Meghan Benda, Natalie C Mamykina, Lena Sun, Yuling Xu, Xuhai "Orson" |
| author_facet | Cao, Yancheng Ji, Yishu Fu, Chris Yue Dharmavaram, Sahiti Turchioe, Meghan Benda, Natalie C Mamykina, Lena Sun, Yuling Xu, Xuhai "Orson" |
| contents | Large language models (LLMs) have been increasingly adopted to support patients' healthcare-seeking in recent years. While prior patient-centered studies have examined the capabilities and experience of LLM-based tools in specific health-related tasks such as information-seeking, diagnosis, or decision-supporting, the inherently longitudinal nature of healthcare in real-world practice has been underexplored. This paper presents a four-week diary study with 25 patients to examine LLMs' roles across healthcare-seeking trajectories. Our analysis reveals that patients integrate LLMs not just as simple decision-support tools, but as dynamic companions that scaffold their journey across behavioral, informational, emotional, and cognitive levels. Meanwhile, patients actively assign diverse socio-technical meanings to LLMs, altering the traditional dynamics of agency, trust, and power in patient-provider relationships. Drawing from these findings, we conceptualize future LLMs as a longitudinal boundary companion that continuously mediates between patients and clinicians throughout longitudinal healthcare-seeking trajectories. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_14733 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | More than Decision Support: Exploring Patients' Longitudinal Usage of Large Language Models in Real-World Healthcare-Seeking Journeys Cao, Yancheng Ji, Yishu Fu, Chris Yue Dharmavaram, Sahiti Turchioe, Meghan Benda, Natalie C Mamykina, Lena Sun, Yuling Xu, Xuhai "Orson" Human-Computer Interaction Large language models (LLMs) have been increasingly adopted to support patients' healthcare-seeking in recent years. While prior patient-centered studies have examined the capabilities and experience of LLM-based tools in specific health-related tasks such as information-seeking, diagnosis, or decision-supporting, the inherently longitudinal nature of healthcare in real-world practice has been underexplored. This paper presents a four-week diary study with 25 patients to examine LLMs' roles across healthcare-seeking trajectories. Our analysis reveals that patients integrate LLMs not just as simple decision-support tools, but as dynamic companions that scaffold their journey across behavioral, informational, emotional, and cognitive levels. Meanwhile, patients actively assign diverse socio-technical meanings to LLMs, altering the traditional dynamics of agency, trust, and power in patient-provider relationships. Drawing from these findings, we conceptualize future LLMs as a longitudinal boundary companion that continuously mediates between patients and clinicians throughout longitudinal healthcare-seeking trajectories. |
| title | More than Decision Support: Exploring Patients' Longitudinal Usage of Large Language Models in Real-World Healthcare-Seeking Journeys |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14733 |