1. Applying Large Language Models to Assess Quality of Care: Monitoring ADHD Medication Side Effects.
- Author
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Bannett Y, Gunturkun F, Pillai M, Herrmann JE, Luo I, Huffman LC, and Feldman HM
- Subjects
- Humans, Child, Retrospective Studies, Male, Female, Central Nervous System Stimulants adverse effects, Central Nervous System Stimulants therapeutic use, Electronic Health Records, Guideline Adherence, Cohort Studies, Quality of Health Care, Primary Health Care, Telemedicine, Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity drug therapy
- Abstract
Objective: To assess the accuracy of a large language model (LLM) in measuring clinician adherence to practice guidelines for monitoring side effects after prescribing medications for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)., Methods: Retrospective population-based cohort study of electronic health records. Cohort included children aged 6 to 11 years with ADHD diagnosis and 2 or more ADHD medication encounters (stimulants or nonstimulants prescribed) between 2015 and 2022 in a community-based primary health care network (n = 1201). To identify documentation of side effects inquiry, we trained, tested, and deployed an open-source LLM (LLaMA) on all clinical notes from ADHD-related encounters (ADHD diagnosis or ADHD medication prescription), including in-clinic/telehealth and telephone encounters (n = 15 628 notes). Model performance was assessed using holdout and deployment test sets, compared with manual medical record review., Results: The LLaMA model accurately classified notes that contained side effects inquiry (sensitivity = 87.2, specificity = 86.3, area under curve = 0.93 on holdout test set). Analyses revealed no model bias in relation to patient sex or insurance. Mean age (SD) at first prescription was 8.8 (1.6) years; characteristics were mostly similar across patients with and without documented side effects inquiry. Rates of documented side effects inquiry were lower for telephone encounters than for in-clinic/telehealth encounters (51.9% vs 73.0%, P < .001). Side effects inquiry was documented in 61.4% of encounters after stimulant prescriptions and 48.5% of encounters after nonstimulant prescriptions (P = .041)., Conclusions: Deploying an LLM on a variable set of clinical notes, including telephone notes, offered scalable measurement of quality of care and uncovered opportunities to improve psychopharmacological medication management in primary care., (Copyright © 2024 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.)
- Published
- 2025
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