Peter Lee, PhD, corporate vice president of research and incubations at Microsoft, said GPT-4, an AI-powered tool built by OpenAI, could have the potential to increase empathy and efficiency at healthcare systems, GeekWire reported March 30.
GPT-4, which has been trained using medical sources, will be able to support clinicians with diagnoses, enhance physicians and patient conversations, as well as reduce medical documentation burdens, according to Dr. Lee.
For example, GPT-4 can summarize medical encounters. The tool is already being used by Microsoft subsidiary Nuance and is being trained on medical data.
Dr. Lee said the tool can also potentially be used to generate orders for lab tests, prescriptions and prior authorization requests, as well as help clinicians make decisions about diagnosis.
The tool, according to Dr. Lee, can list possible conditions that match symptoms and rank them, allowing physicians to get a second opinion.
Currently, OpenAI, which Microsoft has invested in, is also preparing to release a GPT-4 version that can analyze images.
The news comes shortly after Epic Systems said it would use GPT-4 to help physicians and nurses spend less time at the keyboard and to help them investigate data in a conversational way.