AI as an Aid for Weekly Symptom Intake in Radiotherapy

This clinical trial is a comparative study designed to evaluate the accuracy and time efficiency of an AI-enabled symptom summary tool in comparison to traditional medical review methods in patients undergoing radiotherapy in the pelvic region.

Hypothesis:

The AI-enabled symptom summary tool is hypothesized to be non-inferior in accuracy to traditional medical review methods and to save time in the process.

Primary Outcome:

Accuracy of Documentation: The quality of the documentation will be evaluated using the Physician Documentation Quality Instrument-9 (PDQI-9), a validated questionnaire that assesses nine key elements of documentation quality: completeness, correctness, consistency, comprehensibility, relevance, organization, conciseness, formatting, and overall impression. Blinded specialist doctors will use the PDQI-9 to evaluate both AI-generated and traditional summaries, assigning scores from 1 to 10.

Secondary Outcomes:

Time Efficiency: The time required to complete the AI-enabled and traditional consultations will be recorded and compared.

Physician Satisfaction: A custom-designed satisfaction questionnaire will be administered to the physicians participating in the study. This questionnaire will include Likert-scale questions to rate various aspects of satisfaction, including ease of use, time efficiency, accuracy perception, and overall satisfaction.

Patient Satisfaction: A custom-designed satisfaction questionnaire will be administered to the patients participating in the study. This questionnaire will include Likert-scale questions to rate various aspects of satisfaction, including clarity and understanding, perceived accuracy, engagement and interaction, and overall satisfaction.

Methodology:

Patient Selection: Patients meeting the inclusion criteria will be selected for participation. Exclusion criteria will be applied to eliminate cases of pelvic reirradiation or prior operations in the pelvic region.

Consultation Process: Patients will undergo a standard weekly consultation with a doctor. In the same week, each patient will also have a separate consultation with a different doctor. During this second consultation, a symptom questionnaire will be completed under medical supervision. The resulting summary from this questionnaire will be generated using the OpenAI GPT-4 API.

Inclusion criteria

All patients undergoing radiotherapy in the pelvic region.

Exclusion criteria

Cases of pelvic reirradiation or operated cases.