{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,10]],"date-time":"2026-06-10T15:50:17Z","timestamp":1781106617936,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,31]],"date-time":"2025-07-31T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1753920000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Medical education often emphasizes theoretical knowledge, limiting students\u2019 opportunities to practice history taking, a structured interview that elicits relevant patient information before clinical decision making. Large language models (LLMs) offer novel solutions by generating simulated patient interviews. This study evaluated the educational potential of LLM-generated history-taking dialogues, focusing on clinical validity and diagnostic diversity. Chest pain was chosen as a representative case given its frequent presentation and importance for differential diagnosis. A fine-tuned Gemma-3-27B, specialized for medical interviews, was compared with GPT-4o-mini, a freely accessible LLM, in generating multi-branching history-taking dialogues, with Claude-3.5 Sonnet inferring diagnoses from these dialogues. The dialogues were assessed using a Chest Pain Checklist (CPC) and entropy-based metrics. Gemma-3-27B outperformed GPT-4o-mini, generating significantly more high-quality dialogues (90.7% vs. 76.5%). Gemma-3-27B produced diverse and focused diagnoses, whereas GPT-4o-mini generated broader but less specific patterns. For demographic information, such as age and sex, Gemma-3-27B showed significant shifts in dialogue patterns and diagnoses aligned with real-world epidemiological trends. These findings suggest that LLMs, particularly those fine-tuned for medical tasks, are promising educational tools for generating diverse, clinically valid interview scenarios that enhance clinical reasoning in history taking.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info16080653","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,5]],"date-time":"2025-08-05T08:46:55Z","timestamp":1754383615000},"page":"653","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["Using Large Language Models to Simulate History Taking: Implications for Symptom-Based Medical Education"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-8815-4804","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Cheong Yoon","family":"Huh","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-1472-8231","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jongwon","family":"Lee","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3167-8861","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Gibaeg","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0004-7989-1367","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yerin","family":"Jang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-0429-8115","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hye-seung","family":"Ko","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 07804, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-6087-7823","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Min Jung","family":"Suh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 07804, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0006-8697-2928","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sumin","family":"Hwang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 07804, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0001-9478-8964","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ho Jin","family":"Son","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"College of Medicine, Kyunghee University, Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0000-6308-1299","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Junha","family":"Song","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"College of Medicine, Kyunghee University, Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Soo-Jeong","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Division of Hemato-Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Yongin Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Yongin 16995, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Kwang Joon","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"Division of Geriatrics, Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 50-1 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Sung Il","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chang Oh","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Division of Geriatrics, Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 50-1 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0004-5157-5063","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yeo Gyeong","family":"Ko","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AITRICS, Inc., 218 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06221, Republic of Korea"},{"name":"Department of Internal Medicine, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,31]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Peterson, P., Baker, E., and McGaw, B. 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