Real World Prompting · Lesson 2

Medical Records Prompt

Building a patient medical record summarization prompt: from a naive first draft to a production solution with system prompt, XML structure, example, and JSON output.

25 min read3 questions in quizReady prompt includedIn progress

Practical exercise

What to do after this lesson

Write a medical record summarization prompt. Start with a naive version, observe format inconsistency, then add a doctor-role system prompt, XML tags for data, an example template, and JSON requirement. Compare results across three different 'patients'.

Task grader

Write a medical record summarization prompt. Start with a naive version, observe format inconsistency, then add a doctor-role system prompt, XML tags for data, an example template, and JSON requirement. Compare results across three different 'patients'.

Your answer

Ready-to-use prompt

Template for this lesson

Copy and adapt to your context. Text in angle brackets should be replaced.

You are a highly experienced medical professional specializing in concise patient summaries.

I need help summarizing patient medical records before tomorrow's appointments.

<example>
<patient_record>Patient Name: [Example], Age: [N]
Medical Record: [history]</patient_record>
<summary>
Name: [Example] | Age: [N]
Key Diagnoses: - [Diagnosis (Year)]
Medications: - [Drug — purpose]
Recent Concerns: - [concern]
Action Items: - [action]
</summary>
</example>

<patient_record>
{{MEDICAL_RECORD}}
</patient_record>

Generate the summary inside <summary> tags.

Prompt sandbox

Prompt

Naive Prompt (Bad)

initial_prompt = """ I have this patient medical record. Can you summarize it for me? {record} I need this for a quick review before the patient's appointment tomorrow. """

Problem: Claude produces different formats — sometimes long paragraphs, sometimes lists. Not compatible with programmatic processing.

Improved Prompt

system = """ You are a highly experienced medical professional with a specialty in translating complex patient histories into concise, actionable summaries. Your role is to analyze patient records, identify critical information, and present it in a clear, structured format that aids in diagnosis and treatment planning. """ updated_prompt = """ I need your help summarizing patient medical records for our team of doctors. Each summary should include the following elements in this order: - The patient's name and age - A bulleted list of key diagnoses in chronological order - A bulleted list of medications the patient is prescribed - A bulleted list of other treatments (CBT, physical therapy, etc.) - A short bulleted list of recent concerns - A bulleted list of key action items for the doctor <example> <patient_record>Patient Name: Ethan Blackwood, Age: 55...</patient_record> <summary> Name: Ethan Blackwood Age: 55 Key Diagnoses: - Hypertension (2010) ... </summary> </example> <patient_record> {record} </patient_record> """

JSON Version for Programmatic Processing

response = client.messages.create( model="claude-3-sonnet-20240229", max_tokens=4096, system=system, messages=[{"role": "user", "content": complete_prompt}] ) import json summary_data = json.loads(response.content[0].text) action_items = summary_data.get("action_items", [])

Requesting JSON with fields name, age, key_diagnoses, medications, recent_concerns, action_items enables automatically aggregating a daily physician task list across all patients.

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