CClinicalTrials.gg
CompletedNCT07654036Updated Jul 30, 2026

Preliminary Evaluation of a Large Language Model-Based Tool for Complex Surgical Decision Support in Lung Cancer

An interventional study of GAPS-Agent and LLM in Large Language Models and Lung Cancer (NSCLC), sponsored by Peking University People's Hospital. Completed at 1 site in China. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 65 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-07-30.

Sponsored by Peking University People's Hospital · Not applicable, Interventional, and Other

Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
8
Allocation
Randomized
Ages
18 Years to 65 Years
Sex
All
01

Study summary

This study is an exploratory effect-size estimation study, with the following specific objectives: ① to estimate the point estimate and 95% confidence interval of the Win Ratio for the experimental group (GAPS-Agent) versus the control group (large language model) in blinded pairwise preference judgments by thoracic surgery expert adjudicators, to serve as a sample size planning parameter for subsequent multicenter confirmatory clinical trials; ② to preliminarily evaluate the value of GAPS-Agent within clinical workflows.The hypothesis of this study is as follows: compared with a general-purpose large language model without medical enhancement (control group), a structured agentic workflow optimized on the basis of the GAPS evaluation framework (GAPS-Agent, experimental group) can help junior resident physicians generate clinical decision plans for complex lung cancer cases that are more strongly preferred by senior thoracic surgery expert adjudicators.

02

Conditions studied

  • Large Language Models
  • Lung Cancer (NSCLC)

Keywords

  • Large Language Models
  • Lung Cancer
  • Multidisciplinary Team
  • Benchmark Test
  • Clinical Trial
03

In context

Lung Neoplasms

7,243 studies on the registry are indexed under Lung Neoplasms; 1,557 are open to participants now.

This study's enrollment of 8 is below the median of 60 across 5,295 interventional studies indexed under Lung Neoplasms.

Browse Lung Neoplasms studies →

Lead sponsor

Peking University People's Hospital is the lead sponsor of 584 studies on the registry; 233 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
18 Years to 65 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

  1. Resident Physician Subjects:

    1. Holds a valid and legally effective Physician Practice License of the People's Republic of China;
    2. Currently holds the rank of resident physician in a thoracic surgery department at a tertiary Class A (3A) hospital;
    3. Agrees to complete all assessment tasks of the main study phase in accordance with the study protocol;
    4. Can guarantee the time and effort required to complete all assessment tasks of the main study.
  2. Study Cases:

    1. The case was discussed at the Thoracic Oncology Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) conference of Peking University People's Hospital between January 2025 and May 2026;
    2. The current version of the NCCN guidelines does not provide an explicit recommendation covering the management of the case;
    3. Does not overlap with the GAPS evaluation set;
    4. The case is presented in pure text in a structured format, with all direct and indirect identifiers removed and complete de-identification performed prior to inclusion;
    5. From the pool of eligible cases, 12 cases will be randomly drawn using Python (numpy.random, with a fixed and archived seed) to serve as the main study cases. The cases will cover 6 themes (chest mass of undetermined diagnosis, early-stage lung cancer, locally advanced lung cancer, oligometastatic/oligoprogressive disease, special intraoperative situations, and tumor recurrence), with 1 - 4 cases per theme.
  3. Adjudication Expert Panel:

    1. Holds a valid and legally effective Physician Practice License of the People's Republic of China;
    2. Currently holds the rank of attending physician or above in a thoracic surgery department at a tertiary Class A hospital;
    3. Chairs or regularly participates in lung cancer multidisciplinary team (MDT) work in their department.

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  1. Resident Physician Subjects:

    1. Has previously participated in the construction of the GAPS evaluation set or the development of GAPS-Agent;
    2. Unable to complete the tasks of the study phase.
  2. Study Cases:

    1. Key case information is missing, such as text-form data on pathology (including IHC/NGS), imaging, laboratory tests, prior medical history, comorbidities, or PS score;
    2. Decision-making for the case is strictly dependent on non-text information.
  3. Adjudication Expert Panel:

    1. Participated in the construction of the GAPS evaluation set, the content validity verification, or the development of GAPS-Agent for this study;
    2. Has a direct conflict of interest with any specific product among the two-arm tools of this study.
05

Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Other
Allocation
Randomized
Intervention model
Parallel assignment
Masking
Single (Outcomes assessor)
Enrollment
8 participants (actual)

Study arms

  • Experimental
    test arm

    GAPS-Agent

    Other: GAPS-Agent

  • Active comparator
    control arm

    LLM

    Other: LLM

Interventions

  • OtherGAPS-Agent

    The research group has previously developed the GAPS evaluation framework for complex clinical decision-making in lung cancer. In this framework, G (Grounding) characterizes the cognitive depth of decision-making (ranging from knowledge retrieval to decisions that go beyond clinical guidelines), A (Authority) corresponds to the grading of evidence strength, P (Perturbation) describes the identification and management of real-world clinical confounding factors, and S (Strength) corresponds to the calibration of recommendation strength. Within this framework, the research group has completed the construction of a 100-item complex lung cancer decision-making evaluation set along with its corresponding rubrics, and has invited multiple thoracic oncology experts to complete content validity validation. Based on this, the research group developed GAPS-Agent, which uses an open-source large language model as its foundation and integrates functional modules such as guideline and evidence retri

  • OtherLLM

    Open source large language model that is not specifically enhanced in medical field.

06

What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Overall plan Win Ratio

    A total of 10 blinded expert judges made Win/Tie/Loss ternary preference judgments on 192 paired scheme comparisons in terms of overall scheme quality. The win ratio was calculated as Wins ÷ Losses, and the 95% confidence interval was estimated using a two-level (physician × case) cluster bootstrap resampling method (B = 10,000, quantile method on the log scale).

    Time frame: Measured at the time when experts completed their preference judgements. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the preference judgements.

Secondary outcomes

  1. Inter-rater agreement

    For the ternary preference judgment results of 10 expert judges across 192 paired comparisons and 6 evaluation domains, Fleiss' kappa was used to assess inter-rater agreement. The kappa value and its 95% confidence interval are reported for each evaluation domain.

    Time frame: Measured at the time when experts completed their preference judgements. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the preference judgements.

  2. Redundancy Win Ratio

    A total of 10 blinded expert judges made Win/Tie/Loss ternary preference judgments on 192 paired scheme comparisons in terms of overall scheme quality. The win ratio was calculated as Wins ÷ Losses, and the 95% confidence interval was estimated using a two-level (physician × case) cluster bootstrap resampling method (B = 10,000, quantile method on the log scale).

    Time frame: Measured at the time when experts completed their preference judgements. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the preference judgements.

  3. Evidence-based medicine adherence Win Ratio

    A total of 10 blinded expert judges made Win/Tie/Loss ternary preference judgments on 192 paired scheme comparisons in terms of overall scheme quality. The win ratio was calculated as Wins ÷ Losses, and the 95% confidence interval was estimated using a two-level (physician × case) cluster bootstrap resampling method (B = 10,000, quantile method on the log scale).

    Time frame: Measured at the time when experts completed their preference judgements. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the preference judgements.

  4. Actionability Win Ratio

    A total of 10 blinded expert judges made Win/Tie/Loss ternary preference judgments on 192 paired scheme comparisons in terms of overall scheme quality. The win ratio was calculated as Wins ÷ Losses, and the 95% confidence interval was estimated using a two-level (physician × case) cluster bootstrap resampling method (B = 10,000, quantile method on the log scale).

    Time frame: Measured at the time when experts completed their preference judgements. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the preference judgements.

  5. Completeness Win Ratio

    A total of 10 blinded expert judges made Win/Tie/Loss ternary preference judgments on 192 paired scheme comparisons in terms of overall scheme quality. The win ratio was calculated as Wins ÷ Losses, and the 95% confidence interval was estimated using a two-level (physician × case) cluster bootstrap resampling method (B = 10,000, quantile method on the log scale).

    Time frame: Measured at the time when experts completed their preference judgements. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the preference judgements.

  6. Safety Win Ratio

    A total of 10 blinded expert judges made Win/Tie/Loss ternary preference judgments on 192 paired scheme comparisons in terms of overall scheme quality. The win ratio was calculated as Wins ÷ Losses, and the 95% confidence interval was estimated using a two-level (physician × case) cluster bootstrap resampling method (B = 10,000, quantile method on the log scale).

    Time frame: Measured at the time when experts completed their preference judgements. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the preference judgements.

  7. GAPS automated rubric score

    A third-party large language model, independent of the two study arms' base models, served as the judge model and automatically scored all 96 plans according to the GAPS rubric.

    Time frame: Generated up to 3 weeks after residents finished their plan generation.

  8. Subject physician's self-confidence score

    After submitting each case plan, the participating physicians self-rated their confidence in their own plan using a 1-5 point Likert scale.

    Time frame: Completed at the time when residents submitted their plans. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the submission.

  9. Tool satisfaction score

    After submitting each case plan, the participating physicians rated their satisfaction with the tool using a 1-5 point Likert scale.

    Time frame: Completed at the time when residents submitted their plans. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the submission.

  10. Tool trustworthiness score

    After submitting each case plan, the participating physicians rated the tool's credibility using a 1-5 point Likert scale.

    Time frame: Completed at the time when residents submitted their plans. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the submission.

  11. Decision-making time

    The time taken (in minutes) by each participating physician to complete the production of each case plan was automatically recorded by the evaluation platform. Differences between groups were analyzed using a linear mixed-effects model.

    Time frame: Completed at the time when residents submitted their plans. Calculated up to 3 weeks after the submission.

07

Study locations

1 site
  • Peking University People's Hospital
    Beijing, Beijing Municipality 100044, China
08

References and documents

Individual participant data

Plan to share: No

No publications or documents are linked to this record.

09

Updates

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Jul 30, 2026, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
10

Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT07654036
Lead sponsor
Peking University People's Hospital
Responsible party
XiuYuan Chen (Associate Chief Physician, Peking University People's Hospital) — Principal investigator
First posted
Jun 17, 2026
Start date
Jun 10, 2026
Primary completion
Jun 20, 2026
Completion
Jun 21, 2026
Last update
Jul 30, 2026

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

Not currently enrolling

This study is completed, as verified in Jul 2026. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.

Follow this study

Get an email when the registry record changes — status, dates, results — or when someone posts here.

Sign in to follow

Discussion

Questions and observations about this study, from anyone following it. Not medical advice, and not a channel to the study team — their contact details are on the registry record.

Sign in to join the discussion. Reading takes no account; posting does. You choose a display name, and a pseudonym is the default.

Nothing here yet. If you are running this trial, taking part in it, or weighing whether to, this is the place to say so.

Start the discussion