A large real-world clinical trial has found that a generative AI-powered support tool used to support frontline clinicians was safe and improved the quality of clinical decision-making, but did not significantly change short-term patient outcomes.
The study, published in Nature Medicine, is one of the first randomized controlled trials worldwide to test whether generative AI can improve patient-level outcomes, rather than just clinician performance or simulated cases.
The trial involved more than 9,600 patients attending 16 primary care clinics in Kenya and was delivered by experts at the University of Birmingham, supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Center: Birmingham.
Clinicians were randomly assigned to use an electronic medical record system with or without an integrated AI consult tool that provided real-time diagnostic and treatment suggestions. The AI system, known as "AI Consult," was a large language model-based clinical decision support tool embedded directly within the existing electronic medical record system.
During consultations, the tool worked in the background by:
