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Utilizing large language models in infectious disease transmission modelling for public health preparedness

Introduction

OpenAI's ChatGPT, a Large Language Model (LLM), is a powerful tool across domains, designed for text and code generation, fostering collaboration, especially in public health. Investigating the role of this advanced LLM chatbot in assisting public health practitioners in shaping disease transmission models to inform infection control strategies, marks a new era in infectious disease epidemiology research. This study used a case study to illustrate how ChatGPT collaborates with a public health practitioner in co-designing a mathematical transmission model.

Methods

Using natural conversation, the practitioner initiated a dialogue involving an iterative process of code generation, refinement, and debugging with ChatGPT to develop a model to fit 10 days of prevalence data to estimate two key epidemiological parameters: i) basic reproductive number (Ro) and ii) final epidemic size. Verification and validation processes are conducted to ensure the accuracy and functionality of the final model.

Results

ChatGPT developed a validated transmission model which replicated the epidemic curve and gave estimates of Ro of 4.19 (95 % CI: 4.13- 4.26) and a final epidemic size of 98.3 % of the population within 60 days. It highlighted the advantages of using maximum likelihood estimation with Poisson distribution over least squares method.

Conclusion

Integration of LLM in medical research accelerates model development, reducing technical barriers for health practitioners, democratizing access to advanced modeling and potentially enhancing pandemic preparedness globally, particularly in resource-constrained populations.

Transforming nursing with large language models: from concept to practice

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have emerged as potential game-changers in nursing, aiding in patient education, diagnostic assistance, treatment recommendations, and administrative task efficiency. While these advancements signal promising strides in healthcare, integrated LLMs are not without challenges, particularly artificial intelligence hallucination and data privacy concerns. Methodologies such as prompt engineering, temperature adjustments, model fine-tuning, and local deployment are proposed to refine the accuracy of LLMs and ensure data security. While LLMs offer transformative potential, it is imperative to acknowledge that they cannot substitute the intricate expertise of human professionals in the clinical field, advocating for a synergistic approach in patient care.

Extracting symptoms from free-text responses using ChatGPT among COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the feasibility and performance of Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer (ChatGPT) in converting symptom narratives into structured symptom labels.

METHODS

We extracted symptoms from 300 deidentified symptom narratives of COVID-19 patients by a computer-based matching algorithm (the standard), and prompt engineering in ChatGPT. Common symptoms were those with a prevalence >10% according to the standard, and similarly less common symptoms were those with a prevalence of 2-10%. The precision of ChatGPT was compared with the standard using sensitivity and specificity with 95% exact binomial CIs (95% binCIs). In ChatGPT, we prompted without examples (zero-shot prompting) and with examples (few-shot prompting).

RESULTS

In zero-shot prompting, GPT-4 achieved high specificity (0.947 [95% binCI: 0.894-0.978]-1.000 [95% binCI: 0.965-0.988, 1.000]) for all symptoms, high sensitivity for common symptoms (0.853 [95% binCI: 0.689-0.950]-1.000 [95% binCI: 0.951-1.000]), and moderate sensitivity for less common symptoms (0.200 [95% binCI: 0.043-0.481]-1.000 [95% binCI: 0.590-0.815, 1.000]). Few-shot prompting increased the sensitivity and specificity. GPT-4 outperformed GPT-3.5 in response accuracy and consistent labelling.

DISCUSSION

This work substantiates ChatGPT's role as a research tool in medical fields. Its performance in converting symptom narratives to structured symptom labels was encouraging, saving time and effort in compiling the task-specific training data. It potentially accelerates free-text data compilation and synthesis in future disease outbreaks and improves the accuracy of symptom checkers. Focused prompt training addressing ambiguous descriptions impacts medical research positively.