Exploring ChatGPT in clinical inquiry: a scoping review of characteristics, applications, challenges, and evaluation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Recent advancements in generative AI, exemplified by ChatGPT, hold promise for healthcare applications such as decision-making support, education, and patient engagement. However, rigorous evaluation is crucial to ensure reliability and safety in clinical contexts. This scoping review explores ChatGPT's role in clinical inquiry, focusing on its characteristics, applications, challenges, and evaluation. Methods: This review, conducted in 2023, followed PRISMA-ScR guidelines (Supplemental Digital Content 1, http://links.lww.com/MS9/A636). Searches were performed across PubMed, Scopus, IEEE, Web of Science, Cochrane, and Google Scholar using relevant keywords. The review explored ChatGPT's effectiveness in various medical domains, evaluation methods, target users, and comparisons with other AI models. Data synthesis and analysis incorporated both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Results: Analysis of 41 academic studies highlights ChatGPT's potential in medical education, patient care, and decision support, though performance varies by medical specialty and linguistic context. GPT-3.5, frequently referenced in 26 studies, demonstrated adaptability across diverse scenarios. Challenges include limited access to official answer keys and inconsistent performance, underscoring the need for ongoing refinement. Evaluation methods, including expert comparisons and statistical analyses, provided significant insights into ChatGPT's efficacy. The identification of target users, such as medical educators and nonexpert clinicians, illustrates its broad applicability. Conclusion: ChatGPT shows significant potential in enhancing clinical practice and medical education. Nevertheless, continuous refinement is essential for its successful integration into healthcare, aiming to improve patient care outcomes, and address the evolving needs of the medical community.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.180 | 0.427 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.026 | 0.027 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".