ArticleApplied clinical informatics2025
Automating Responses to Patient Portal Messages Using Generative AI.
Article in Applied clinical informatics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled 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.
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.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Computational Use of Patient-Provider Secure Messaging Data to Achieve Better Clinical Efficiency and Quality of Communication: A Systematic Review.AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium · 2024Pooled it
- Assessing the integration of digitalization and AI in general medicine curricula in German-speaking Europe: a comprehensive survey.Medical education online · 2026Article
- Supporting patient understanding of cervical and ovarian cancer: how well does AI perform?Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center) · 2026Article
- Applications, Challenges, and Future Directions of Large Language Models in Health Care Communication: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- A scoping review of studies on secure messaging through patient portals: persistent challenges and potential solutions.npj health systems · 2026Article
- Article
- A Dataset for Addressing Patient's Information Needs related to Clinical Course of Hospitalization.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Artificial Intelligence in Outpatient Primary Care: A Scoping Review on Applications, Challenges, and Future Directions.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- A systematic review of early evidence on generative AI for drafting responses to patient messages.npj health systems · 2025Article
- The Goldilocks Zone: Finding the right balance of user and institutional risk for suicide-related generative AI queries.PLOS digital health · 2025Article
- Article
- When AI Writes Back: Ethical Considerations by Physicians on AI-Drafted Patient Message Replies.AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Patient portals bridge patient and provider communications but exacerbate physician and nursing burnout. Large language models (LLMs) can generate message responses that are viewed favorably by health care professionals/providers (HCPs); however, these studies have not included diverse message types or new prompt-engineering strategies.Our goal is to investigate and compare the quality and precision of GPT-generated message responses versus real doctor responses across the spectrum of message types within a patient portal.We used prompt engineering techniques to craft synthetic provider responses tailored to adult primary care patients. We enrolled a sample of primary care providers in a cross-sectional study to compare authentic with synthetic patient portal message responses generated by GPT-3.5-turbo, July 2023 version (GPT). The survey assessed each response's empathy, relevance, medical accuracy, and readability on a scale from 0 to 5. Respondents were asked to identify responses that were GPT-generated versus provider-generated. Mean scores for all metrics were computed for subsequent analysis.A total of 49 HCPs participated in the survey (59% completion rate), comprising 16 physicians and 32 advanced practice providers (APPs). In comparison to responses generated by real doctors, GPT-generated responses scored statistically significantly higher than doctors in two of the four parameters: empathy (
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Registered trials
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.