Patient-centered Evaluation of AI Answers to Genetic Counseling Questions

Abstract

The growing use of large language models for health communication raises important questions about patient preferences, trust, and satisfaction with AI-generated content. We conducted a qualitative survey comparing patient perceptions of clinician versus AI answers to questions about Alzheimer’s disease and genetics. Twenty-six participants scored responses on relevance, trustworthiness, and coherence, and additionally selected a preferred response and provided free-text comments. We found that participants generally preferred AI responses over human-written ones and rated them higher on all evaluation axes. Qualitative analysis of free-text comments identified key factors influencing patient preferences, including clarity, verbosity, certainty, empathy, and numeracy, with patients showing diverse and sometimes contradictory preferences along these dimensions. These findings suggest the AI-generated responses were well-received by patients and may have a role in triaging patients with information-seeking queries. Future work should focus on dynamically identifying patient communication preferences and tailoring communication styles accordingly.

Competing Interest Statement

Dr. Bradbury receives partial research funding from Astrazeneca and Merck.

Funding Statement

This study did not receive any funding

Author Declarations

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

IRB of University of Pennsylvania gave ethical approval for this work under protocol #844571.

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

Yes

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

Yes

Data Availability

All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors

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