Insights: LLM adoption in primary care

The PLOS One protocol documents a descriptive qualitative study to explore physician views on LLMs, and it schedules recruitment from August 1, 2025 to January 31, 2026 PLOS One.

• 1) According to PLOS One, the article was published on August 7, 2026 and the manuscript was received July 18, 2025 and accepted July 22, 2026.
• 2) According to PLOS One, the study will purposively sample physicians by LLM experience using thresholds of 50+, 5–50, and fewer than 5 lifetime uses in clinical contexts.
• 3) According to PLOS One, the protocol reports that the number of Canadians without a family doctor rose from 4.5 million in 2019 to about 6.5 million in 2023, motivating a primary care focus.
• 4) According to Pokharel et al., the study will combine deductive and inductive thematic analysis under the new TAB framework to explain technology uptake.

The protocol defines a descriptive qualitative study to capture family physicians’ perceptions of LLM adoption, according to PLOS One.

According to PLOS One, the research team will use semi-structured interviews with purposive sampling among British Columbia family physicians to represent varying levels of LLM use and years of practice.

According to PLOS One, interviewers will record, transcribe verbatim, deidentify, and analyze transcripts with NVivo using combined deductive codes from the TAB framework and inductive codes developed from the data.

According to Pokharel et al., "we plan to use semi-structured interviews with purposively sampled primary care physicians from British Columbia, Canada, " and the team will prepare reflexive memos to contextualize coding decisions.

Answer: The protocol shows how to combine a theory-driven framework with flexible qualitative description to study LLM uptake, according to PLOS One.

According to PLOS One, the TAB framework unifies perception-focused models (perceived ease of use and usefulness) and task-technology fit traditions, so mixed deductive-inductive coding can map preexisting constructs and emergent clinician concerns.

Practical implication: According to PLOS One, purposive sampling by LLM experience and years in practice improves analytical generalizability; researchers should include screening items that record counts of prior LLM uses and practice tenure.

Practical implication: According to PLOS One, researchers should build reflexive memoing and monthly codebook review into their timeline to let a multidisciplinary team interrogate interpretations.

The PLOS One protocol offers a replicable, theory-driven approach to studying LLM adoption in primary care and supplies timelines, sampling strata, and analysis plans you can adopt or adapt PLOS One.

Researchers running similar studies should predefine usage strata (the protocol uses 50+, 5–50, and <5 uses), build reflexive memoing into monthly codebook reviews, and plan transcription and PII workflows that match the ethics language in the protocol, according to PLOS One.

If you want to accelerate transcription, deidentification, and theory-aligned thematic analysis for a protocol like this, try Evidano’s integrated pipeline and collaborative codebook tools; see our features page for details.

Next step: register a trial dataset and pilot two interviews, then move from pilot to full recruitment following the protocol schedule and reporting standards in PLOS One.

Ready to run your interviews and analysis pipeline? Try Evidano for free.