Nurses at a large academic health system like using artificial intelligence-generated MyChart messages more than their peers do, a new study found.
Nearly 70 healthcare providers at Aurora, Colo.-based UCHealth deployed a generative AI tool to draft patient portal responses in Epic between September 2023 and March 2024, according to the Oct. 14 JAMA Network Open research letter. Registered nurses had a more favorable view of the platform and were more likely to recommend it to others compared to physicians, advanced practice clinicians and medical assistants.
Nurses most liked the tool's efficiency, empathy and tone and were most likely to say the AI helped them stay within their scope of practice and reduced the need to forward messages, the study found.
However, physicians and advanced practice providers may get more complex messages that are harder for the large language model to interpret, while medical assistants may see requests that are beyond their scope of practice, the researchers noted. So these AI platforms may need to be refined to filter who receives which messages and draft responses accordingly.