LLMs offer healthcare team members a wealth of possibilities, including summarizing information, generating patient-specific handouts and potentially suggesting diagnostic and treatment options—a potential future benefit. Nevertheless, it is essential clinicians thoroughly review and refine the content created by LLMs because their accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Moreover, LLMs can enhance communication and minimize errors, especially when communicating with non-English-speaking patients. As technology advances, the role of LLMs in healthcare is destined to expand.
Limitations
At this time, one of the main limitations of using LLMs in medicine is the inability to generate citations. While using ChatGPT to write a case report, I realized it had generated statistics I could not find in the literature. When I asked for a citation, ChatGPT generated a fake citation, complete with a digital object identifier (DOI). The citation, at first glance, did not appear fake until I searched for an article that was nowhere to be found. This is concerning.
Physicians must understand what LLMs are designed to do, as well as their limitations.
Although LLMs cannot currently cite sources accurately, I predict that in the near future, LLMs will be able to provide comprehensive literature reviews complete with citations. In fact, LLMs may come to rival such medical resources as UpToDate.
Physician Well-Being
AI is permeating medicine, and physicians need to familiarize themselves with its potential implications. To fully maximize the benefits of LLMs in healthcare, physicians should advocate for solutions to their top patient care concerns, ensuring these tools address their specific needs and challenges. By taking an active role in shaping the development and implementation of LLMs in medicine, physicians can ensure it serves their interests and those of their patients.
Numerous products claim to reduce administrative work and alleviate physician burnout, but could LLMs be the solution? Physicians are tired of hearing from employers that they need to exercise more or meditate to reduce burnout. In a time of increasing physician burnout, healthcare employers have a duty to help alleviate the administrative burden placed on physicians. Doing so will allow physicians to devote more time to caring for patients. LLMs offer a promising solution to this problem.
Legal Implications
As LLMs become more prevalent in healthcare, physicians need to be mindful of the legal implications of using them to share patient information. The benefits of LLMs include customizing patient handouts, summarizing medical topics and improving patient care. However, HIPAA compliance is of particular concern. It is important to note that no case law currently discusses this new age of LLMs. However, based on existing case law, it is possible to analyze and understand the legal implications of using LLMs in healthcare.
