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Considerations for Patient Privacy of Large Language Models in Health Care: Scoping Review

Background: The application of large language models (LLMs) in health care holds significant potential for enhancing patient care and advancing medical research. However, the protection of patient privacy remains a critical issue, especially when handling patient health information (PHI). Objective: This scoping review aims to evaluate the adequacy of current approaches and identify areas in need of improvement to ensure robust patient privacy protection in the existing studies about PHI-LLMs within the health care domain. Methods: A search of the literature published from January 1, 2022, to July 20, 2025, was performed on July 20, 2025, using 2 databases (PubMed and Embase). This scoping review focused on the following three research questions: (1) What studies on the development and application of LLMs using PHI currently exist within the health care domain? (2) What patient privacy considerations are addressed in existing PHI-LLMs research, and are these measures sufficient? (3) How can future research on the development and application of LLMs using PHI better protect patient privacy? Studies were included if they focused on the development and application of LLMs within health care using PHI, encompassing activities such as model construction, fine-tuning, optimization, testing, and performance comparison. Eligible literature comprised original research articles written in English. Conversely, studies were excluded if they used publicly available datasets, under the assumption that such data have been adequately deidentified. Additionally, non-English publications, reviews, abstracts, incomplete reports, and preprints were excluded from the review due to the lack of rigorous peer review. Results: This study systematically identified 9823 studies on PHI-LLM and included 464 studies published between 2022 and 2025. Among the 464 studies, (1) a small number of studies neglected ethical review (n=45, 9.7%) and patient informed consent (n=148, 31.9%) during the research process, (2) more than a third of the studies (n=178, 38.4%) failed to report whether to implement effective measures to protect PHI, and (3) there was a significant lack of transparency and comprehensive detail in anonymization and deidentification methods. Conclusions: We propose comprehensive recommendations across 3 phasesβ€”study design, implementation, and reportingβ€”to strengthen patient privacy protection and transparency in PHI-LLM. This study emphasizes the urgent need for the development of stricter regulatory frameworks and the adoption of advanced privacy protection technologies to effectively safeguard PHI. It is anticipated that future applications of LLMs in the health care field will achieve a balance between innovation and robust patient privacy protection, thereby enhancing ethical standards and scientific credibility.
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Early Screening and Subtype Identification of High-Risk Lung Nodules via Breathprint by Graphene eNose Platform: A Large Cohort Study

ACS Sens. 2025 Apr 25;10(4):3101-3111. doi: 10.1021/acssensors.5c00314. Epub 2025 Apr 7.

ABSTRACT

Early screening of individuals with high-risk lung nodules can significantly improve the prognosis of lung cancer patients, and accurate identification of lung nodule subtypes can provide guidance for medical treatment. Exhaled breath (EB) analysis via eNoses offers a quick and noninvasive approach, but current eNose technology lacks quality control and solid validation in large population studies. Herein, an eNose platform integrated with a metal ion-decorated graphene sensor array and a breath sampling accessory was established. EB samples from 427 healthy subjects and 2586 subjects with lung nodules, including various benign and malignant subtypes, were collected through the breath sampling accessory for quality control. The large-cohort clinical EB samples were analyzed by the eNose platform to acquire the cross-reactive resistance response. Breathprint analysis for high-risk lung nodules using SVM and age-matched training sets yielded strong and robust performance. Combined with baseline data, the model achieved an AUC of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.89-0.96) on the external test set, with 97% sensitivity and 73% specificity. Moreover, dimensionality reduction analysis of breathprints demonstrated separability across different lung nodule subtypes. This study demonstrates the reliability of the graphene eNose platform to identify high-risk lung nodules and classify lung nodule subtypes in a noninvasive and rapid method.

PMID:40193324 | DOI:10.1021/acssensors.5c00314

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