AI Language Models Write Good Doctor's Letters

Generative AI should be able to write usable doctor's letters and thus potentially speed up medical documentation, according to a study by the University Medical Center Freiburg. Around 93% of the AI-generated reports could have been used with only minimal adaptations, the researchers found.

"Our results show that models specially trained for the German language can provide valuable support in the creation of medical reports. This could significantly simplify workflows in everyday clinical practice," says study leader Dr. Christian Haverkamp, Acting Director of the Institute for Digitalization in Medicine at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg.

"The AI doctor's letter is an excellent example of how much potential AI applications have in medicine. For such solutions, we need bright minds who are willing to experiment and develop new things. I am delighted that we have created an environment at the University Medical Center Freiburg that strongly promotes these activities," says Prof. Dr. Frederik Wenz, Chief Medical Director of the Medical Center - University of Freiburg.

In the study, first author Felix Heilmeyer, researcher at the Institute for Digitization in Medicine, used a total of 90,000 real clinical documents from the Department of Ophthalmology at the Freiburg Medical Center to train the models. Several language models generated doctor's letters on this basis, which were then evaluated by medical professionals. The evaluations showed that with the BLOOM-CLP-German model, 93.1 percent of the documents generated were suitable for clinical use after minor corrections. In addition to the choice of the appropriate model, the researchers emphasize that its adaptation to the respective language area plays a decisive role in its suitability for practical use.

According to surveys, doctors spend almost three hours a day on documentation activities. "The automation of medical documentation has the potential to save doctors valuable time that they can devote directly to their patients. At the Department of Ophthalmology, we already use an AI tool for writing doctor's letters on a regular basis," says Prof. Dr. Daniel Böhringer, initiator of the study and senior physician at the Department of Ophthalmology at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg.

The biggest challenge of the study was to ensure that the documents generated by the language model met the high standards of medical documentation in German. "Adapting to specific medical terminology and the structure of clinical reports was a particularly demanding task, as the model had to deliver texts that were both precise and comprehensible," says Böhringer.

Heilmeyer F, Böhringer D, Reinhard T, Arens S, Lyssenko L, Haverkamp C.
Viability of Open Large Language Models for Clinical Documentation in German Health Care: Real-World Model Evaluation Study.
JMIR Med Inform. 2024 Aug 28;12:e59617. doi: 10.2196/59617

Most Popular Now

Philips Foundation 2024 Annual Report: E…

Marking its tenth anniversary, Philips Foundation released its 2024 Annual Report, highlighting a year in which the Philips Foundation helped provide access to quality healthcare for 46.5 million people around...

New AI Transforms Radiology with Speed, …

A first-of-its-kind generative AI system, developed in-house at Northwestern Medicine, is revolutionizing radiology - boosting productivity, identifying life-threatening conditions in milliseconds and offering a breakthrough solution to the global radiologist...

Scientists Argue for More FDA Oversight …

An agile, transparent, and ethics-driven oversight system is needed for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to balance innovation with patient safety when it comes to artificial intelligence-driven medical...

New Research Finds Specific Learning Str…

If data used to train artificial intelligence models for medical applications, such as hospitals across the Greater Toronto Area, differs from the real-world data, it could lead to patient harm...

Giving Doctors an AI-Powered Head Start …

Detection of melanoma and a range of other skin diseases will be faster and more accurate with a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool that analyses multiple imaging types simultaneously...

AI Agents for Oncology

Clinical decision-making in oncology is challenging and requires the analysis of various data types - from medical imaging and genetic information to patient records and treatment guidelines. To effectively support...

Patients say "Yes..ish" to the…

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be integrated in healthcare, a new multinational study involving Aarhus University sheds light on how dental patients really feel about its growing role in...

Brains vs. Bytes: Study Compares Diagnos…

A University of Maine study compared how well artificial intelligence (AI) models and human clinicians handled complex or sensitive medical cases. The study published in the Journal of Health Organization...

'AI Scientist' Suggests Combin…

An 'AI scientist', working in collaboration with human scientists, has found that combinations of cheap and safe drugs - used to treat conditions such as high cholesterol and alcohol dependence...

Start-ups in the Spotlight at MEDICA 202…

17 - 20 November 2025, Düsseldorf, Germany. MEDICA, the leading international trade fair and platform for healthcare innovations, will once again confirm its position as the world's number one hotspot for...