Published 25 March 2024 at 14.57
Domestic. According to a recent study, the AI model ChatGPT can write medical administrative notes up to ten times faster than doctors – without compromising on quality.
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The study has been carried out by researchers Akademiska sjukhuset/Uppsala University in collaboration with Danderyd Hospital and the University Hospital in Basel in Switzerland.
– For several years, the debate has been about how we can improve efficiency in healthcare. Thanks to advances in generative AI, especially with language models such as ChatGPT, the door is now opening to reduce the administrative work of healthcare professionals. By using AI to create medical documents, doctors can devote more time to their patients, says Cyrus Brodén, orthopedist and researcher at the Academic Hospital/Uppsala University, in a press release.
The purpose of the study was to assess the quality and effectiveness of ChatGPT in the creation of medical record notes. The researchers started from six virtual patient cases that mimicked real cases in both structure and content.
Discharge documents for each case were generated by orthopedists. Then ChatGPT-4 was asked to generate the same notes. The quality assessment was performed by an expert panel of 15 people who were unaware of the source of the documents. As a secondary measure, the time required to create the documents was compared.
– The result shows that ChatGPT-4 and human-generated notes are overall comparable in quality, but ChatGPT4 generated discharge documents ten times faster than the doctors, says Cyrus Brodén and continues:
– Our interpretation is that advanced large language models such as ChatGPT -4 has the potential to change the way we work with administrative tasks in healthcare. I believe that generative AI will have a big impact in healthcare and that this could be the start of a very exciting development.
Soon, the plan is to start a follow-up study where the researchers will collect 1,000 medical patient records. Here, too, the aim is to use ChatGPT to produce similar administrative notes in the journals.
– This will be an interesting and resource-intensive work with many partners. Together with Max Gordon, this year's AI Swede 2023, and Microsoft, we are actively working to ensure that all data management requirements are met in order for the study to get started. This also applies to confidentiality aspects, says Cyrus Brodén.
At Akademiska sjukhuset, another project is also underway which aims to simplify and improve the administration and thus free up time for the work closer to the patient. It is about widespread adoption of AI-based speech recognition, speech to text. The dictations from all healthcare personnel who document in a medical record – doctors, nurses and the health profession in general – are recorded immediately, which is said to simplify administration and increase patient safety as the note becomes immediately visible to the next actor in the patient's care.