Photo Credit: Phonlamai Photo

Physicians who use AI-generated draft replies to patient portal messages find the technology easy to adopt and use and beneficial to their overall well-being, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Patricia Garcia, MD, and colleagues evaluated the implementation of a large language model to draft responses to patient messages in an electronic inbox. The analysis included 162 primary care and gastroenterology clinicians, 73 of whom completed surveys before and after implementation. The mean AI-generated draft response utilization rate across clinicians was 20%. Compared with the prepilot period, there was no change in reply action time, write time, or read time during the pilot periods. In the prepilot and postpilot surveys, researchers found statistically significant reductions in the four-item physician task load score derivative (mean, 61.31 presurvey vs 47.26 postsurvey) and work exhaustion scores (mean, 1.95 and 1.62, respectively). Dr. Garcia and colleagues concluded using large language models in clinical workflows was feasible and associated with improved clinician well-being.