The role of artificial intelligence in informed patient consent for radiotherapy treatments—a case report

Recent advancements in large language models (LMM; e.g., ChatGPT (OpenAI, San Francisco, California, USA)) have seen widespread use in various fields, including healthcare. This case study reports on the first use of LMM in a pretreatment discussion and in obtaining informed consent for a radiation oncology treatment. Further, the reproducibility of the replies by ChatGPT 3.5 was analyzed. A breast cancer patient, following legal consultation, engaged in a conversation with ChatGPT 3.5 regarding her radiotherapy treatment. The patient posed questions about side effects, prevention, activities, medications, and late effects. While some answers contained inaccuracies, responses closely resembled doctors’ replies. In a final evaluation discussion, the patient, however, stated that she preferred the presence of a physician and expressed concerns about the source of the provided information. The reproducibility was tested in ten iterations. Future guidelines for using such models in radiation oncology should be driven by medical professionals. While artificial intelligence (AI) supports essential tasks, human interaction remains crucial.