Release of complex imaging reports to patients, do radiologists trust AI to help?

As a result of the 21st Century Cures Act, radiology reports are immediately released to patients. However, these reports are often too complex for the lay patient, potentially leading to stress and anxiety. While solutions such as patient portals or providing radiologist contact information have been proposed in the past, new generative artificial intelligence technologies like ChatGPT and Google Gemini may provide the most accessible and scalable method of simplifying radiology reports for patients. Here, we gather the opinions of radiologists regarding this possibility.

An eight-question survey was sent out to all diagnostic/interventional radiology attendings and clinical fellows at our large academic medical center.

From our survey (N = 52), 52.8 % of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that patients should have immediate access to their radiology reports. Only 9.61 % agreed that radiology reports are understandable by the lay patient. Regarding potential avenues to improve patient comprehension of their radiology reports, using artificial intelligence to simplify reports with a manual check by radiologists garnered the most support/strong support (46.2 %). Support of artificial intelligence generated simplifications dropped to (23.1 %) without a manual check.

Patients are increasingly gaining access to their radiology reports, but reports may be too complex for the lay patient. Eventually, artificial intelligence systems may help simplify radiology reports for patients, but there is currently limited support from radiologists.