Roles and potential of Large language models in healthcare: A comprehensive review

Large Language Models (LLMs) are capable of transforming healthcare by demonstrating remarkable capabilities in language understanding and generation. They have matched or surpassed human performance in standardized medical examinations and assisted in diagnostics across specialties like dermatology, radiology, and ophthalmology. LLMs can enhance patient education by providing accurate, readable, and empathetic responses, and they can streamline clinical workflows through efficient information extraction from unstructured data such as clinical notes. Integrating LLM into clinical practice involves user interface design, clinician training, and effective collaboration between Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and healthcare professionals. Users must possess a solid understanding of generative AI and domain knowledge to assess the generated content critically. Ethical considerations to ensure patient privacy, data security, mitigating biases, and maintaining transparency are critical for responsible deployment. Future directions for LLMs in healthcare include interdisciplinary collaboration, developing new benchmarks that incorporate safety and ethical measures, advancing multimodal LLMs that integrate text and imaging data, creating LLM-based medical agents capable of complex decision-making, addressing underrepresented specialties like rare diseases, and integrating LLMs with robotic systems to enhance precision in procedures. Emphasizing patient safety, ethical integrity, and human-centered implementation is essential for maximizing the benefits of LLMs, while mitigating potential risks, thereby helping to ensure that these AI tools enhance rather than replace human expertise and compassion in healthcare.