Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38343631›Full record

ArticleNEJM AI2024

Almanac - Retrieval-Augmented Language Models for Clinical Medicine.

Cyril Zakka, Rohan Shad, Akash Chaurasia, Alex R Dalal, Jennifer L Kim, Michael Moor, Robyn Fong, Curran Phillips, Kevin Alexander, Euan Ashley and 12 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in NEJM AI, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 191 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
191citing papers in PubMed, 3 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

191 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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131 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

22 authors.

Cyril ZakkaDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0001-8446-2349
Rohan ShadDivision of Cardiovascular Surgery, Penn Medicine, Philadelphia.ORCID 0000-0002-0453-9041
Akash ChaurasiaDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0003-3438-3313
Alex R DalalDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0002-9993-3817
Jennifer L KimDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0002-2313-2685
Michael MoorDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0003-4911-6437
Robyn FongDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0002-7953-5109
Curran PhillipsDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0009-0008-8316-6765
Kevin AlexanderDivision of Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0003-4024-3691
Euan AshleyDivision of Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0001-9418-9577
Jack BoydDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0002-3020-5280
Kathleen BoydDepartment of Pediatrics, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0009-0007-9366-754X
Karen HirschDepartment of Neurology, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0002-5474-3243
Curt LanglotzDepartment of Radiology and Biomedical Informatics, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0002-8972-8051
Rita LeeDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0009-0007-8868-6447
Joanna MeliaDivision of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore.ORCID 0000-0002-0984-4600
Joanna NelsonDivision of Infectious Diseases, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0003-2152-2847
Karim SallamDivision of Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0003-3469-6571
Stacey TullisDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0009-0000-8950-5790
Melissa Ann VogelsongDivision of Anesthesia, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0003-0601-3542
John Patrick CunninghamDepartment of Statistics, Columbia University, New York.ORCID 0000-0001-9125-3027
William HiesingerDepartment of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford Medicine, Stanford, CA.ORCID 0000-0002-3548-2578

Funding

Radiomics approach to engineering an artificial intelligence based echocardiography platform to predict cardiovascular surgery and heart failure outcomes.R01HL157235 · NHLBI · STANFORD UNIVERSITY · PI William Hiesinger · 2022 to 2026
$3.1M
NHLBI NIH HHS R01 HL157235
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundLarge language models (LLMs) have recently shown impressive zero-shot capabilities, whereby they can use auxiliary data, without the availability of task-specific training examples, to complete a variety of natural language tasks, such as summarization, dialogue generation, and question answering. However, despite many promising applications of LLMs in clinical medicine, adoption of these models has been limited by their tendency to generate incorrect and sometimes even harmful statements.

methodsWe tasked a panel of eight board-certified clinicians and two health care practitioners with evaluating Almanac, an LLM framework augmented with retrieval capabilities from curated medical resources for medical guideline and treatment recommendations. The panel compared responses from Almanac and standard LLMs (ChatGPT-4, Bing, and Bard) versus a novel data set of 314 clinical questions spanning nine medical specialties.

resultsAlmanac showed a significant improvement in performance compared with the standard LLMs across axes of factuality, completeness, user preference, and adversarial safety.

conclusionsOur results show the potential for LLMs with access to domain-specific corpora to be effective in clinical decision-making. The findings also underscore the importance of carefully testing LLMs before deployment to mitigate their shortcomings. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.).

Identifiers

PMID38343631
PMCPMC10857783

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceTDM
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.