Exploring the potential of artificial intelligence models for triage in the emergency department.

Objective: To perform a comparative analysis of the three-level triage protocol conducted by triage nurses and emergency medicine doctors with the use of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Pi, which are recognized artificial intelligence (AI) models widely used in the daily life.

Materials and methods: The study was prospectively conducted with patients presenting to the emergency department of a tertiary care hospital from 1 April 2024, to 7 April 2024. Among the patients who presented to the emergency department over this period, data pertaining to their primary complaints, arterial blood pressure values, heart rates, peripheral oxygen saturation values measured by pulse oximetry, body temperature values, age, and gender characteristics were analyzed. The triage categories determined by triage nurses, the abovementioned AI chatbots, and emergency medicine doctors were compared.

Results: The study included 500 patients, of whom 23.8% were categorized identically by all triage evaluators. Compared to the triage conducted by emergency medicine doctors, triage nurses overtriaged 6.4% of the patients and undertriaged 3.1% of the yellow-coded patients and 3.4% of the red-coded patients. Of the AI chatbots, ChatGPT exhibited the closest triage approximation to that of emergency medicine doctors; however, its undertriage rates were 26.5% for yellow-coded patients and 42.6% for red-coded patients.

Conclusion: The undertriage rates observed in AI models were considerably high. Hence, it does not yet seem appropriate to solely rely on the specified AI models for triage purposes in the emergency department.