Generative-AI as a source of caregiving guidance for medical tourists: A content and readability analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Medical tourism (MT) caregiving companions are often expected to navigate unfamiliar healthcare systems, manage high-stress situations, and bridge linguistic and cultural divides on behalf of medical tourists. Despite these responsibilities, the informational and educational needs of these surrogate caregivers remain largely underexplored. OBJECTIVES: Given the limited availability of clear and credible guidance for MT caregiving companions, this study examines generative-AI-produced caregiving guidance, evaluating its readability, evidentiary transparency, and topical coverage to assess its relevance for future human-curated educational resources. METHODS: Using a pre-scripted, sequential prompting design, researchers queried three widely used generative-AI platforms-ChatGPT-4, Gemini 1.0, and Copilot in March 2024. A thematic qualitative content analysis was conducted to evaluate generated caregiving guidance, including readability, evidentiary support, and description of key caregiving responsibilities. RESULTS: GenAI MT caregiving guidance frequently exceeded recommended readability levels for general audiences and often lacked citations or clear evidentiary grounding. However, across platforms, responses consistently addressed a broader range of caregiving considerations with a high degree of convergence on the topics of logistics and planning, cultural navigation, patient advocacy, and continuity of care. CONCLUSIONS FINDINGS: indicate that GenAI frames medical tourism caregiving as a complex, multidimensional role, yet platforms differed in emphasis, provided inconsistent evidentiary support, and largely omitted relational aspects such as trust and surrogate decision-making. These results suggest that GenAI guidance should not be used as stand-alone health education but may inform resource development when critically evaluated and human-curated. Practice Implications RESULTS HIGHLIGHT: the need for targeted, plain-language educational resources for MT caregiving companions and greater transparency regarding the limitations, sourcing, and appropriate use of AI-generated health information. Findings also underscore practical and ethical considerations for integrating generative AI into future patient and caregiver education initiatives.