Large Language Models for Pediatric Differential Diagnoses in Rural Health Care: Multicenter Retrospective Cohort Study Comparing GPT-3 With Pediatrician Performance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Rural health care providers face unique challenges such as limited specialist access and high patient volumes, making accurate diagnostic support tools essential. Large language models like GPT-3 have demonstrated potential in clinical decision support but remain understudied in pediatric differential diagnosis. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and reliability of a fine-tuned GPT-3 model compared to board-certified pediatricians in rural health care settings. Methods: This multicenter retrospective cohort study analyzed 500 pediatric encounters (ages 0-18 years; n=261, 52.2% female) from rural health care organizations in Central Louisiana between January 2020 and December 2021. The GPT-3 model (DaVinci version) was fine-tuned using the OpenAI application programming interface and trained on 350 encounters, with 150 reserved for testing. Five board-certified pediatricians (mean experience: 12, SD 5.8 years) provided reference standard diagnoses. Model performance was assessed using accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and subgroup analyses. Results: The GPT-3 model achieved an accuracy of 87.3% (131/150 cases), sensitivity of 85% (95% CI 82%-88%), and specificity of 90% (95% CI 87%-93%), comparable to pediatricians' accuracy of 91.3% (137/150 cases; P=.47). Performance was consistent across age groups (0-5 years: 54/62, 87%; 6-12 years: 47/53, 89%; 13-18 years: 30/35, 86%) and common complaints (fever: 36/39, 92%; abdominal pain: 20/23, 87%). For rare diagnoses (n=20), accuracy was slightly lower (16/20, 80%) but comparable to pediatricians (17/20, 85%; P=.62). Conclusions: This study demonstrates that a fine-tuned GPT-3 model can provide diagnostic support comparable to pediatricians, particularly for common presentations, in rural health care. Further validation in diverse populations is necessary before clinical implementation.
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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 | 0.006 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
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".