Chonbuk National University Hospital is taking steps to integrate generative artificial intelligence (AI) into its clinical research efforts. The initiative aims to enhance the efficiency of researchers' tasks, such as writing papers and conducting literature searches, while also expanding the use of AI to clinical trials, extensive data analysis, and ultimately, patient care and community health management.
The hospital's Functional Food Clinical Trial Support Center held a seminar on August 3, inviting Kang Si-cheol, Vice President of Genosis AI Healthcare, to discuss strengthening capabilities in generative AI. The seminar took place in the video conference room of the Clinical Research Support Center at Chonbuk National University Hospital.
Attendees included researchers from the Functional Food Clinical Trial Support Center, officials from the hospital's Efficacy Evaluation Center, and professors from Chonbuk National University. Vice President Kang introduced tools like Claude and Gemini for tasks such as paper writing, literature searches, research data analysis, presentation preparation, and prompt writing.
The seminar particularly focused on the potential of generative AI to serve not just as a document creation tool but as a decision-support tool for researchers in the medical and clinical research fields.
Clinical research requires extensive information to review domestic and international papers, formulate research hypotheses, design clinical trials, and analyze results. Utilizing generative AI can help researchers efficiently search for necessary literature, summarize and analyze data, and organize research findings into reports.
The hospital explained that there is significant potential for AI in evaluating the efficacy of functional foods and materials. By systematically analyzing research data and clinical information related to health functional foods and materials, researchers can quickly find the information they need and synthesize multiple research results to establish new research directions.
The ultimate goal of using AI is not just to accelerate research speed. It is crucial to create a virtuous cycle where data accumulated in clinical settings is utilized in research, and the results confirmed through research are applied back to patient care.
As a regional medical hub, Chonbuk National University Hospital plays a role in patient care, medical education, and clinical research. When AI is applied simultaneously in research, education, and patient care, it can serve as a foundation to connect these previously separate areas. This involves analyzing research data to identify risk factors for diseases or treatment-related patterns, which can then support medical professionals' decision-making.
In a community facing aging and increasing chronic diseases, there is growing interest in preventive health management using AI. Beyond treating patients who visit the hospital, AI can be used to identify individuals at high risk for diseases early and to research preventive management strategies that consider personal health status and lifestyle.
The field of functional foods also has the potential to evolve into personalized research. This could expand from merely confirming the efficacy of specific materials to analyzing which functional materials are effective for individuals based on their health status, lifestyle, and clinical data.
Chonbuk National University is also expanding its foundation for generative AI use this year. Since February, the university has piloted a 'multi-LLM-based generative AI service' that allows approximately 22,000 faculty, students, staff, and teaching assistants to access various large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude on a single platform. With this university-wide AI utilization environment established, a systematic expansion of AI capabilities in the medical and clinical research fields is now possible.
However, for the expanded use of AI in healthcare, ensuring accuracy and safety is essential. This includes protecting personal data in medical records, managing the quality of research data, verifying information generated by AI with medical professionals, and addressing the so-called 'hallucination' phenomenon of generative AI.
It is also important to emphasize that AI should not replace medical professionals and researchers but rather serve as a tool to analyze vast amounts of information and uncover new possibilities. Ultimately, the competitive edge of university hospitals in AI will depend not on which AI services they use, but on how effectively they can produce high-quality research and connect those results to patients and the community quickly.
The recent seminar by the Functional Food Clinical Trial Support Center at Chonbuk National University Hospital marks the first step toward the full integration of generative AI into clinical research. As AI technology combines with the educational, research, and clinical infrastructure of Chonbuk National University School of Medicine and Chonbuk National University Hospital, it is anticipated to enhance the competitiveness of medical and bio-research in the Jeonbuk region.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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