Large Language Models in Worldwide Medical Exams: Platform Development and Comprehensive Analysis.

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into medical education, with transformative potential for learning and assessment. However, their performance across diverse medical exams globally has remained underexplored. This study aims to introduce MedExamLLM, a comprehensive platform designed to systematically evaluate the performance of LLMs on medical exams worldwide. Specifically, the platform seeks to (1) compile and curate performance data for diverse LLMs on worldwide medical exams; (2) analyze trends and disparities in LLM capabilities across geographic regions, languages, and contexts; and (3) provide a resource for researchers, educators, and developers to explore and advance the integration of artificial intelligence in medical education. A systematic search was conducted on April 25, 2024, in the PubMed database to identify relevant publications. Inclusion criteria encompassed peer-reviewed, English-language, original research articles that evaluated at least one LLM on medical exams. Exclusion criteria included review articles, non-English publications, preprints, and studies without relevant data on LLM performance. The screening process for candidate publications was independently conducted by 2 researchers to ensure accuracy and reliability. Data, including exam information, data process information, model performance, data availability, and references, were manually curated, standardized, and organized. These curated data were integrated into the MedExamLLM platform, enabling its functionality to visualize and analyze LLM performance across geographic, linguistic, and exam characteristics. The web platform was developed with a focus on accessibility, interactivity, and scalability to support continuous data updates and user engagement. A total of 193 articles were included for final analysis. MedExamLLM comprised information for 16 LLMs on 198 medical exams conducted in 28 countries across 15 languages from the year 2009 to the year 2023. The United States accounted for the highest number of medical exams and related publications, with English being the dominant language used in these exams. The Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) series models, especially GPT-4, demonstrated superior performance, achieving pass rates significantly higher than other LLMs. The analysis revealed significant variability in the capabilities of LLMs across different geographic and linguistic contexts. MedExamLLM is an open-source, freely accessible, and publicly available online platform providing comprehensive performance evaluation information and evidence knowledge about LLMs on medical exams around the world. The MedExamLLM platform serves as a valuable resource for educators, researchers, and developers in the fields of clinical medicine and artificial intelligence. By synthesizing evidence on LLM capabilities, the platform provides valuable insights to support the integration of artificial intelligence into medical education. Limitations include potential biases in the data source and the exclusion of non-English literature. Future research should address these gaps and explore methods to enhance LLM performance in diverse contexts.

Zong H ，Wu R ，Cha J ，Wang J ，Wu E ，Li J ，Zhou Y ，Zhang C ，Feng W ，Shen B ... -  《JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH》

The Accuracy and Capability of Artificial Intelligence Solutions in Health Care Examinations and Certificates: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Large language models (LLMs) have dominated public interest due to their apparent capability to accurately replicate learned knowledge in narrative text. However, there is a lack of clarity about the accuracy and capability standards of LLMs in health care examinations. We conducted a systematic review of LLM accuracy, as tested under health care examination conditions, as compared to known human performance standards. We quantified the accuracy of LLMs in responding to health care examination questions and evaluated the consistency and quality of study reporting. The search included all papers up until September 10, 2023, with all LLMs published in English journals that report clear LLM accuracy standards. The exclusion criteria were as follows: the assessment was not a health care exam, there was no LLM, there was no evaluation of comparable success accuracy, and the literature was not original research.The literature search included the following Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms used in all possible combinations: "artificial intelligence," "ChatGPT," "GPT," "LLM," "large language model," "machine learning," "neural network," "Generative Pre-trained Transformer," "Generative Transformer," "Generative Language Model," "Generative Model," "medical exam," "healthcare exam," and "clinical exam." Sensitivity, accuracy, and precision data were extracted, including relevant CIs. The search identified 1673 relevant citations. After removing duplicate results, 1268 (75.8%) papers were screened for titles and abstracts, and 32 (2.5%) studies were included for full-text review. Our meta-analysis suggested that LLMs are able to perform with an overall medical examination accuracy of 0.61 (CI 0.58-0.64) and a United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) accuracy of 0.51 (CI 0.46-0.56), while Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer (ChatGPT) can perform with an overall medical examination accuracy of 0.64 (CI 0.6-0.67). LLMs offer promise to remediate health care demand and staffing challenges by providing accurate and efficient context-specific information to critical decision makers. For policy and deployment decisions about LLMs to advance health care, we proposed a new framework called RUBRICC (Regulatory, Usability, Bias, Reliability [Evidence and Safety], Interoperability, Cost, and Codesign-Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement [PPIE]). This presents a valuable opportunity to direct the clinical commissioning of new LLM capabilities into health services, while respecting patient safety considerations. OSF Registries osf.io/xqzkw; https://osf.io/xqzkw.

Waldock WJ ，Zhang J ，Guni A ，Nabeel A ，Darzi A ，Ashrafian H ... -  《JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH》

Examining the Role of Large Language Models in Orthopedics: Systematic Review.

Large language models (LLMs) can understand natural language and generate corresponding text, images, and even videos based on prompts, which holds great potential in medical scenarios. Orthopedics is a significant branch of medicine, and orthopedic diseases contribute to a significant socioeconomic burden, which could be alleviated by the application of LLMs. Several pioneers in orthopedics have conducted research on LLMs across various subspecialties to explore their performance in addressing different issues. However, there are currently few reviews and summaries of these studies, and a systematic summary of existing research is absent. The objective of this review was to comprehensively summarize research findings on the application of LLMs in the field of orthopedics and explore the potential opportunities and challenges. PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were searched from January 1, 2014, to February 22, 2024, with the language limited to English. The terms, which included variants of "large language model," "generative artificial intelligence," "ChatGPT," and "orthopaedics," were divided into 2 categories: large language model and orthopedics. After completing the search, the study selection process was conducted according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The quality of the included studies was assessed using the revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials and CONSORT-AI (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials-Artificial Intelligence) guidance. Data extraction and synthesis were conducted after the quality assessment. A total of 68 studies were selected. The application of LLMs in orthopedics involved the fields of clinical practice, education, research, and management. Of these 68 studies, 47 (69%) focused on clinical practice, 12 (18%) addressed orthopedic education, 8 (12%) were related to scientific research, and 1 (1%) pertained to the field of management. Of the 68 studies, only 8 (12%) recruited patients, and only 1 (1%) was a high-quality randomized controlled trial. ChatGPT was the most commonly mentioned LLM tool. There was considerable heterogeneity in the definition, measurement, and evaluation of the LLMs' performance across the different studies. For diagnostic tasks alone, the accuracy ranged from 55% to 93%. When performing disease classification tasks, ChatGPT with GPT-4's accuracy ranged from 2% to 100%. With regard to answering questions in orthopedic examinations, the scores ranged from 45% to 73.6% due to differences in models and test selections. LLMs cannot replace orthopedic professionals in the short term. However, using LLMs as copilots could be a potential approach to effectively enhance work efficiency at present. More high-quality clinical trials are needed in the future, aiming to identify optimal applications of LLMs and advance orthopedics toward higher efficiency and precision.

Zhang C ，Liu S ，Zhou X ，Zhou S ，Tian Y ，Wang S ，Xu N ，Li W ... -  《JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH》

Large Language Models and Empathy: Systematic Review.

Empathy, a fundamental aspect of human interaction, is characterized as the ability to experience another being's emotions within oneself. In health care, empathy is a fundamental for health care professionals and patients' interaction. It is a unique quality to humans that large language models (LLMs) are believed to lack. We aimed to review the literature on the capacity of LLMs in demonstrating empathy. We conducted a literature search on MEDLINE, Google Scholar, PsyArXiv, medRxiv, and arXiv between December 2022 and February 2024. We included English-language full-length publications that evaluated empathy in LLMs' outputs. We excluded papers evaluating other topics related to emotional intelligence that were not specifically empathy. The included studies' results, including the LLMs used, performance in empathy tasks, and limitations of the models, along with studies' metadata were summarized. A total of 12 studies published in 2023 met the inclusion criteria. ChatGPT-3.5 (OpenAI) was evaluated in all studies, with 6 studies comparing it with other LLMs such GPT-4, LLaMA (Meta), and fine-tuned chatbots. Seven studies focused on empathy within a medical context. The studies reported LLMs to exhibit elements of empathy, including emotions recognition and emotional support in diverse contexts. Evaluation metric included automatic metrics such as Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation and Bilingual Evaluation Understudy, and human subjective evaluation. Some studies compared performance on empathy with humans, while others compared between different models. In some cases, LLMs were observed to outperform humans in empathy-related tasks. For example, ChatGPT-3.5 was evaluated for its responses to patients' questions from social media, where ChatGPT's responses were preferred over those of humans in 78.6% of cases. Other studies used subjective readers' assigned scores. One study reported a mean empathy score of 1.84-1.9 (scale 0-2) for their fine-tuned LLM, while a different study evaluating ChatGPT-based chatbots reported a mean human rating of 3.43 out of 4 for empathetic responses. Other evaluations were based on the level of the emotional awareness scale, which was reported to be higher for ChatGPT-3.5 than for humans. Another study evaluated ChatGPT and GPT-4 on soft-skills questions in the United States Medical Licensing Examination, where GPT-4 answered 90% of questions correctly. Limitations were noted, including repetitive use of empathic phrases, difficulty following initial instructions, overly lengthy responses, sensitivity to prompts, and overall subjective evaluation metrics influenced by the evaluator's background. LLMs exhibit elements of cognitive empathy, recognizing emotions and providing emotionally supportive responses in various contexts. Since social skills are an integral part of intelligence, these advancements bring LLMs closer to human-like interactions and expand their potential use in applications requiring emotional intelligence. However, there remains room for improvement in both the performance of these models and the evaluation strategies used for assessing soft skills.

Sorin V ，Brin D ，Barash Y ，Konen E ，Charney A ，Nadkarni G ，Klang E ... -  《JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH》

The Role of Large Language Models in Transforming Emergency Medicine: Scoping Review.

Artificial intelligence (AI), more specifically large language models (LLMs), holds significant potential in revolutionizing emergency care delivery by optimizing clinical workflows and enhancing the quality of decision-making. Although enthusiasm for integrating LLMs into emergency medicine (EM) is growing, the existing literature is characterized by a disparate collection of individual studies, conceptual analyses, and preliminary implementations. Given these complexities and gaps in understanding, a cohesive framework is needed to comprehend the existing body of knowledge on the application of LLMs in EM. Given the absence of a comprehensive framework for exploring the roles of LLMs in EM, this scoping review aims to systematically map the existing literature on LLMs' potential applications within EM and identify directions for future research. Addressing this gap will allow for informed advancements in the field. Using PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) criteria, we searched Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for papers published between January 2018 and August 2023 that discussed LLMs' use in EM. We excluded other forms of AI. A total of 1994 unique titles and abstracts were screened, and each full-text paper was independently reviewed by 2 authors. Data were abstracted independently, and 5 authors performed a collaborative quantitative and qualitative synthesis of the data. A total of 43 papers were included. Studies were predominantly from 2022 to 2023 and conducted in the United States and China. We uncovered four major themes: (1) clinical decision-making and support was highlighted as a pivotal area, with LLMs playing a substantial role in enhancing patient care, notably through their application in real-time triage, allowing early recognition of patient urgency; (2) efficiency, workflow, and information management demonstrated the capacity of LLMs to significantly boost operational efficiency, particularly through the automation of patient record synthesis, which could reduce administrative burden and enhance patient-centric care; (3) risks, ethics, and transparency were identified as areas of concern, especially regarding the reliability of LLMs' outputs, and specific studies highlighted the challenges of ensuring unbiased decision-making amidst potentially flawed training data sets, stressing the importance of thorough validation and ethical oversight; and (4) education and communication possibilities included LLMs' capacity to enrich medical training, such as through using simulated patient interactions that enhance communication skills. LLMs have the potential to fundamentally transform EM, enhancing clinical decision-making, optimizing workflows, and improving patient outcomes. This review sets the stage for future advancements by identifying key research areas: prospective validation of LLM applications, establishing standards for responsible use, understanding provider and patient perceptions, and improving physicians' AI literacy. Effective integration of LLMs into EM will require collaborative efforts and thorough evaluation to ensure these technologies can be safely and effectively applied.

Preiksaitis C ，Ashenburg N ，Bunney G ，Chu A ，Kabeer R ，Riley F ，Ribeira R ，Rose C ... -  《JMIR Medical Informatics》