Today, we’re speaking to Dr Garth Funston, a GP and Clinical Senior Lecturer in Primary Care Cancer Research at Queen Mary University of London.
Title of paper: Using large language models to identify pre-diagnostic clinical features of ovarian cancer from healthcare records: a population-based case-control study
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0366
Most women with ovarian cancer present with symptoms, but many symptoms are recorded only in free text healthcare records and missed by studies and clinical decision support tools that rely on coded data. We found that using large language models (LLMs) to extract symptoms from free text records substantially increased symptom detection and strengthened associations with ovarian cancer. Incorporating LLM-extracted symptom information into research and clinical decision tools may support identification
