Peter Lee, a corporate vice president at Microsoft Research who oversees an AI initiative for healthcare and life sciences, was a guest on the podcast Possible with Reid Hoffman and Arya Finger. In the podcast, Lee discussed how doctors can coartintate with GPT-4 to improve clinical care.

Peter Lee provided several examples of how doctors can coartintate with GPT-4:

  • For common curbside consultation queries, GPT-4 can provide diagnostic suggestions and treatment recommendations. An instance was shared by Lee where GPT-4 recommended additional tests for a patient experiencing chest pain with elevated troponin levels.
  • GPT-4 can review a doctor’s differential diagnosis - the list of possible diagnoses for a patient - and suggest anything the doctor may have missed or should consider. Lee notes that GPT-4 is “superhuman” at critiquing and providing a second set of eyes on a doctor’s initial workup.
  • In terms of administrative tasks, GPT-4 can help generate clinical notes and patient communications by extracting key details from patient conversations, medical records, and test results. Lee gave an example of GPT-4 drafting personalized patient notes for doctors to then review and edit if needed.
  • Lee also discussed GPT-4’s potential to synthesize real world clinical experiences and medical knowledge into validated best practices at large scale, though this capability is still emerging.

A quote from Peter Lee:

“Today, when we think about disclosures, there is a major question. should there be a disclosure to patients if a doctor uses AI to assist, let’s say, in a diagnosis or developing a treatment option? I’m certain, in a very small number of years, the disclosure will work the other way. A patient will demand to know if a doctor doesn’t use AI to assist and double-check something, and will demand to want to know why.”