Sifting through vast textual data and summarizing key information imposes a
substantial burden on how clinicians allocate their time. Although large
language models (LLMs) have shown immense promise in natural language
processing (NLP) tasks, their efficacy across diverse clinical summarization
tasks has not yet been rigorously examined. In this work, we employ domain
adaptation methods on eight LLMs, spanning six datasets and four distinct
summarization tasks: radiology reports, patient questions, progress notes, and
doctor-patient dialogue. Our thorough quantitative assessment reveals
trade-offs between models and adaptation methods in addition to instances where
recent advances in LLMs may not lead to improved results. Further, in a
clinical reader study with six physicians, we depict that summaries from the
best adapted LLM are preferable to human summaries in terms of completeness and
correctness. Our ensuing qualitative analysis delineates mutual challenges
faced by both LLMs and human experts. Lastly, we correlate traditional
quantitative NLP metrics with reader study scores to enhance our understanding
of how these metrics align with physician preferences. Our research marks the
first evidence of LLMs outperforming human experts in clinical text
summarization across multiple tasks. This implies that integrating LLMs into
clinical workflows could alleviate documentation burden, empowering clinicians
to focus more on personalized patient care and other irreplaceable human
aspects of medicine.

在本研究中，我们采用八个大型语言模型，在六个数据集和四个不同的摘要任务（放射学报告、患者问题、进展记录和医生 - 患者对话）上应用领域适应方法，系统评估了它们的效果，而且展示出最佳适应的大型语言模型的摘要相较于人工摘要在完整性和正确性方面更可取。此外，我们还将传统的自然语言处理指标与医生评分进行了相关性分析，以提高对这些指标与医生喜好的理解。最终，我们的研究证明了大型语言模型在多个临床文本摘要任务中超越人工专家，这意味着将大型语言模型整合到临床工作流程中可以减轻文档负担，使临床医生能够更多关注个性化患者护理和其他医学中不可替代的人工环节。