New chapter in pediatric medicine: technological evolution, application, and evaluation system of large language...

Area of Science:

• Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
• Natural Language Processing
• Pediatric Healthcare Technology

Background:

• Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly utilized in medicine for tasks like text generation, clinical documentation, and knowledge retrieval.
• Pediatric applications of LLMs remain less systematically reviewed compared to adult medicine.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide an integrative overview of large language model (LLM) development, clinical implementation, and evaluation within pediatric contexts.
• To identify unique challenges in pediatrics, such as age-dependent variability and the necessity of family-centered care.
• To propose design principles for future child-specific LLM benchmarks.

Main Methods:

• Review of recent advancements in LLM technology, including general-purpose models, medical specialized models, and multimodal architectures.
• Exploration of practical applications in pediatric settings, such as dosage calculation and automated medical record structuring.
• Examination of evaluation metrics, ethical-legal challenges, and considerations for multilingual and low-resource environments.

Main Results:

• LLMs offer potential for enhancing diagnostic and treatment efficiency and safety in pediatrics through intelligent patient communication and personalized support.
• Specific pediatric applications include dosage calculation, subspecialty-specific clinical decision support, and automated medical record structuring.
• The review highlights the need to address unique pediatric challenges, including age-dependent variability and family-centered care requirements.

Conclusions:

• Interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial for the safe and equitable integration of LLMs into pediatric medical practice.
• Future research should focus on developing child-specific LLM benchmarks and addressing ethical and practical considerations.
• LLMs present a promising avenue for advancing pediatric healthcare through innovative technological solutions.