AI able to summarise patient records in seconds to free up GP time, researchers find

Credit: Getty/BrianAJackson

By Emma Wilkinson

An artificial intelligence tool may be able to free up GP time by quickly summarising the details from past consultations with a patient, researchers have found.

Such summaries could mean more time for doctors to spend with patients rather than having to trawl through lengthy records to look at a patient’s history, the team from Imperial College London concluded.

To test the idea, a group of GP researchers created 70 simulated patient records before asking a group of clinicians and ChatGPT to do a summary of each one.

It took the doctors 7 minutes to summarise the 2-years worth of records for each patient, which would be a substantial proportion of a standard GP consultation, they noted.

AI was able to do this in 16 seconds with a similar level of accuracy and greater consistency, the study showed.

After being rated by a clinician, the doctor-generated summaries scored more highly particularly when it came to having the most relevant information.