Model development for bespoke large language models for digital triage assistance in mental health care

Contemporary large language models (LLMs) may have utility for processing unstructured, narrative free-text clinical data contained in electronic health records (EHRs) - a particularly important use-case for mental health where a majority of routinely-collected patient data lacks structured, machine-readable content. A significant problem for the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) are the long waiting lists for specialist mental healthcare. According to NHS data (NHS Digital, 2024), in each month of 2023, there were between 370,000 and 470,000 individual new referrals into secondary mental healthcare services. Referrals must be triaged by clinicians, using clinical information contained in the patient's EHR to arrive at a decision about the most appropriate mental healthcare team to assess and potentially treat these patients. The ability to efficiently recommend a relevant team by ingesting potentially voluminous clinical notes could help services both reduce referral waiting times and with the right technology, improve the evidence available to justify triage decisions. We present and evaluate three different approaches for LLM-based, end-to-end ingestion of variable-length clinical EHR data to assist clinicians when triaging referrals. Our model is able to deliver triage recommendations consistent with existing clinical practices and its architecture was implemented on a single GPU, making it practical for implementation in resource-limited NHS environments where private implementations of LLM technology will be necessary to ensure confidential clinical data are appropriately controlled and governed. Code available at: https://github.com/NtaylorOX/BespokeLLM_Triage.