BU HIC: New AI Model PodGPT Blends Research and Podcasts for Smarter Health Answers
Excerpt from BU Hariri Institute | By: Maeve Smillie | July 15, 2025 | Photo: Hariri Institute
In an age where medical misinformation runs rampant and science communication often falls flat, a new artificial intelligence tool promises to bridge the gap between expert knowledge and everyday understanding.
Introducing PodGPT: a tool trained not just on written material like textbooks and journal articles, but also on real conversations. This medical dialogue is sourced from science and medicine podcasts where experts talk through everything from heart disease to public health. By learning from the way people naturally talk about complex topics, PodGPT delivers answers that feel more relatable and easier to understand.
“By integrating spoken content, we aim to enhance our model’s understanding of conversational language,” said Vijaya B. Kolachalama, Associate Professor of Medicine and Computer Science, Hariri Institute Faculty Affiliate, and corresponding author of the study published in npj Biomedical Innovations. “This is special because it uses real conversations, like expert interviews, instead of just written material, helping it better understand how people actually talk about science in real life.”
PodGPT is the latest development in the expanding field of generative AI, where large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT-4 are already transforming how we search for information, study, and make decisions. Yet, until now, most LLMs have been trained almost exclusively on text like books, articles, and scientific papers. That leaves out a rich, often more relatable source of knowledge: spoken conversation.