Submitted:
12 May 2026
Posted:
13 May 2026
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Abstract
Keywords:
Introduction
Methods
Review Design
Population, Concept, Context (PCC) Framework
Eligibility Criteria
Search Strategy
- One direct PubMed/MEDLINE search string combining travel-medicine and AI/LLM concepts.
- Academic and web-indexed search tools applied to the same concept set, including searches restricted to authoritative travel-medicine and clinical AI domains.
- Hand retrieval from Journal of Travel Medicine, Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, BMC Digital Health, and Communications Medicine for AI-relevant titles within the search window.
Study Selection and Data Charting
Quality Appraisal and Certainty Assessment
Study Selection Flow

Results
Confidence in the Evidence Base
- Direct travel-medicine AI evidence (four sources): the ChatGPT pre-travel advice evaluation [2], the Singapore Travel Clinic Assistant implementation [3], the Baglivo decalogue prototype [4], and the Flaherty editorials on supervised generative AI integration and the natural history of AI in travel medicine [5,6]. Heidema et al. is treated as adjacent rather than direct because it concerns AI-supported outbreak surveillance rather than the pre-travel consultation itself [7].
- Adjacent clinical AI evidence (eight sources): clinical LLM evaluation methods [13]; multi-model hallucination and clinical guideline omission/hallucination assurance analyses [14,16]; clinical documentation hallucination framework [15]; ChatGPT meta-analysis [47]; ChatGPT care-seeking accuracy across model versions [48]; ChatGPT FAQ literature review [50]; and travel-related clinical decision support [12].
- Guideline, regulatory, and methodology evidence (twelve sources): CDC Yellow Book pre-travel guidance and VFR chapter [8,9,41]; ISTM pre-travel advice [10]; WHO malaria travel guidance [11]; PRISMA-ScR, scoping methodology, MMAT, AMSTAR 2, GRADE [1,19,20,21,28,29,30]; WHO AI ethics and digital health strategy [26,27]; FDA, TGA, and EU AI Act materials [22,23,24,25]; and AI reporting standards CONSORT-AI, SPIRIT-AI, and TRIPOD+AI [31,32,33,45].
- Adjacent implementation, equity, and patient-engagement evidence (ten sources): clinician adoption of AI [34]; AI in medical education [35]; AI in healthcare overview [36]; VFR uptake studies [37,38]; pre-travel consultation in primary care [39,40]; LLM patient education and chronic-illness chatbot reviews [17,18]; AHRQ healthcare chatbot review [46]; preventive-care chatbot outreach [52]; digital divide and equity [42,43,44]; and retrieval-augmented generation [49].
Evidence Base Overview
Evidence Synthesis Table
Quality and Applicability Appraisal
| Source category | Appraisal approach | Domain assessed | Rationale and main appraisal judgement | Implication for synthesis |
| Singapore Travel Clinic Assistant [3] | MMAT-informed implementation appraisal [19] | Sampling, outcome ascertainment, conflict-of-interest control | Single centre, 26 travellers, qualitative feedback, no comparator; no objective effectiveness outcome; selection bias possible | Useful feasibility signal, not effectiveness evidence |
| ChatGPT pre-travel advice evaluation [2] | Custom accuracy-study appraisal | Scenario coverage, reproducibility, expert benchmarking | Clinically relevant questions and expert comparison; no patient outcomes; no model-version reproducibility; limited scenario diversity | Supports educational potential only |
| Decalogue and editorials [4,5,6,7] | JBI text/opinion-informed appraisal [30] | Domain expertise, logical consistency, relevance | Strong domain expertise and clinical logic but non-empirical and prescriptive rather than evaluative | Useful for implementation principles, not outcome claims |
| FeverTravelApp [12] | MMAT-informed appraisal [19] | Study design, sample size, blinding, comparator | Empirical travel-related CDSS evidence but post-travel and simulated; small physician sample; indirect to pre-travel | Useful for workflow and adoption lessons |
| General clinical LLM systematic review [13] | AMSTAR 2-informed appraisal [20] | PRISMA reporting, search comprehensiveness, risk of bias assessment | Large and relevant review, transparent methods, but indirect to travel medicine; heterogeneity not pooled | Supports need for standardised evaluation |
| Multi-model hallucination, accuracy, and guideline-hallucination studies [14,15,16,47,48,50] | Simulation- and review-study appraisal | Reproducibility, prompt control, clinical reference standard | Strong safety signal for LLM vulnerability and accuracy variability; generally not travel-specific; consistent across models in [14] | Supports conservative governance and human review |
| Patient-education and chatbot reviews [17,18,46,52] | AMSTAR 2-informed appraisal [20] | Search, selection, synthesis transparency | Relevant adjacent evidence; heterogeneous designs and outcomes; limited primary trial data | Supports plausibility of supervised AI use and equity caution |
| Guidelines and authoritative texts [8,9,10,11,41] | JBI text-and-opinion-informed appraisal [30] | Authority, currency, scope | Authoritative guidance from CDC, WHO, ISTM; not designed as evidence appraisal targets but as reference standards | Used as the gold-standard task taxonomy and reference standard, not as outcome evidence |
What the Evidence Allows and Does not Allow
Clinical Safety Risk Taxonomy
Implementation Model for Travel Clinics
Cost-Effectiveness and Implementation Feasibility
Regulatory Landscape
Digital Equity Considerations
When not to Use AI as the Primary Interaction
Research Agenda and Priority Matrix
Discussion
Comparison with Prior Reviews and How this Review Extends Them
Why the Evidence Base Remains Thin
Practical Message for Travel Medicine Clinicians
Limitations
Conclusion
Author Contributions
Funding
Ethics approval
Data availability
Conflicts of interest
Patient and public involvement (PPI)
Reporting standards used
References
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| PCC element | Operational definition | Examples |
| Population | International travellers receiving or seeking pre-travel health advice; clinicians providing pre-travel care; and study cohorts within general clinical AI safety research where the findings are mapped to pre-travel decision support | Adult and paediatric international travellers, VFR travellers, migrant travellers, immunocompromised travellers, primary care physicians, travel medicine specialists, simulated patient cohorts in clinical LLM studies |
| Concept | AI tools, large language models, chatbots, retrieval-augmented generation, and clinical decision support systems applied to pre-travel risk assessment, education, intake, recommendation, escalation, or after-visit reinforcement; clinical AI safety, hallucination, and reporting standards | ChatGPT and GPT-4-based pre-travel assistants, custom GPT prototypes, tablet-based travel CDSS, generative AI educational outputs, RAG architectures, hallucination and accuracy audits |
| Context | International, multilingual, ambulatory pre-travel and travel-related clinical settings; primary care, specialist travel clinics, university-affiliated travel medicine services; relevant guideline, regulatory, and equity contexts | High-, middle-, and low-income settings; United States, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Italy, EU; CDC, WHO, ISTM guidance; FDA, TGA, EU AI Act regulatory frameworks |
| Source | Country/setting | Source type and sample | AI/tool type | Consultation task mapped to CDC Yellow Book domains [8] | Main finding | Key safety concern | GRADE-informed certainty (reasoning) [21] |
| Ngiam et al. ChatGPT pre-travel advice evaluation [2] | Not patient-setting specific | Scenario-based expert evaluation; no patient sample | General-purpose ChatGPT | General advice, vaccination, malaria prophylaxis, traveller’s diarrhoea, vector avoidance | Readable and often accurate answers to common questions | Generic advice; insufficient itinerary and comorbidity personalisation | Very low (single non-patient study; high indirectness; no comparator) |
| Koh et al. Travel Clinic Assistant [3] | Singapore tertiary pre-travel clinic | Implementation research letter; 26 travellers | Custom GPT-4 assistant | Pre-consultation education, query elicitation, complex traveller education | Acceptable to travellers and physicians; perceived consultation focus and knowledge benefit | Small sample, self-report outcomes, digital literacy barriers, no EHR integration, hallucination risk | Very low (small single-site implementation; subjective outcomes; serious imprecision) |
| Baglivo et al. travel-health chatbot decalogue [4] | Italy/prototype context | Expert framework and pre-alpha custom GPT example | Custom GPT prototype | Personalisation, geolocation, multilingual support, clinic referral, EHR aspiration | Proposed ten design requirements for safe travel-health chatbots | Prototype lacks full privacy, scope-control, and EHR safeguards | Very low (framework paper; no empirical outcomes) |
| Flaherty editorial — supervised GenAI integration [5] | International travel medicine | Expert opinion/editorial | Generative AI broadly | Pre-clinic preparation, translation, literacy tailoring, reminders | AI may support preparation and reinforce consultation learning | Must not replace individualised clinician judgement | Very low (expert opinion; non-empirical) |
| Flaherty and Piyaphanee natural-history editorial [6] | International travel medicine | Expert opinion/editorial | AI broadly | Risk personalisation, behaviour prediction, surveillance | Frames AI’s potential trajectory in travel medicine | Non-empirical; aspirational | Very low (expert opinion; non-empirical) |
| Heidema et al. GeoSentinel-AI surveillance [7] | International | Multidisciplinary editorial/perspective | Machine-learning approaches | Outbreak detection adjacent to pre-travel risk | Demonstrates concrete adjacent AI implementation pathway | Non-empirical for pre-travel decisions | Very low (perspective paper; indirect outcomes) |
| Vibert et al. FeverTravelApp [12] | Switzerland; returned traveller fever workflow | Case-control simulated consultations; seven physicians, three simulated patients | Tablet clinical decision-support algorithm | Travel-related risk intake, exposure history, dynamic clinical reasoning | Demonstrates feasibility issues for travel-related CDSS in consultations | Indirect to pre-travel prevention; clinician interaction and adoption matter | Low (small simulation study; indirect to pre-travel) |
| CDC Yellow Book pre-travel consultation guidance [8,9] | United States guidance | Clinical guidance | Not AI | Gold-standard task taxonomy for pre-travel risk assessment | Defines domains AI must support and not oversimplify | Authoritative reference standard against which AI outputs should be checked; risk that AI outputs may diverge from current guidance | Not applicable (guideline; serves as reference standard) |
| WHO malaria travel guidance [11] | Global guidance | Clinical guidance | Not AI | Malaria geography, chemoprophylaxis, mosquito protection | Defines high-risk domain requiring up-to-date recommendations | Updates frequently; AI tools relying on training-data snapshots may be outdated | Not applicable (guideline; serves as reference standard) |
| ISTM pre-travel health advice [10] | International travel medicine | Professional fact sheet | Not AI | Risk assessment, timing, vaccines, medicines, chronic illness | Reinforces that travel advice extends beyond vaccines | Useful patient-facing standard; AI must not understate timing-of-consultation criticality | Not applicable (guideline; serves as reference standard) |
| Shool et al. LLM evaluation systematic review [13] | General clinical medicine | Systematic review; 761 studies | LLMs | Evaluation standards for clinical AI | Evaluation methods remain heterogeneous | Indirect to travel medicine | Low (systematic review; indirect outcomes) |
| Collins multi-model hallucination assurance [14] | General clinical decision support | Simulation study; multiple models | Multiple LLMs | Safety testing for clinical decision support | LLMs repeated or elaborated false clinical details in 50 to 82 percent of outputs | Directly relevant to hallucination risk | Moderate for general LLM risk; indirect for travel (consistent finding across multiple models) |
| Asgari et al. CREOLA hallucination framework [15] | Clinical documentation | Framework and evaluation study | LLMs | Clinical documentation accuracy | Hallucinations more often “major” than omissions, especially in plan sections | Directly relevant to AI-generated travel advice | Low to moderate (single framework study; high indirectness to travel) |
| van Kessel et al. clinical guideline hallucination analysis [16] | Clinical decision support | Diagnostic LLM systematic analysis | LLMs | Hallucination of authoritative guidelines | Identifies measurable prevalence of fabricated and omitted clinical guideline content | Highly relevant to fabricated travel-vaccine or malaria guidance | Low (single multi-model analysis; indirect to travel) |
| Bagde et al. ChatGPT meta-analysis [47] | Medical and dental research | Systematic review and meta-analysis | ChatGPT | Domain-specific accuracy | Accuracy 18 to 100 percent across specialties; high variability | Indirect; supports specialty-specific benchmarks | Low (high inconsistency; indirectness) |
| Duong et al. care-seeking accuracy [48] | General | Multi-version evaluation; 22 model versions | ChatGPT | Care-seeking advice across urgency levels | Average accuracy ~70 percent; overtriage; increasing variability with newer models | Directly supports conservative governance | Low to moderate (multi-version simulation; indirect to travel) |
| Geracitano et al. ChatGPT FAQ literature review [50] | General | Literature review; nine studies | ChatGPT | FAQ, recommendation, symptom categorisation | Accuracy 20 to 95 percent; not standalone point-of-care | Supports human oversight requirement | Low (small literature review; indirect to travel) |
| Aydin et al. patient-education LLM scoping review [17] | General medicine | Scoping review | LLMs | Patient education and engagement | LLMs may generate education material but face accuracy, readability, and bias challenges | Indirect to pre-travel education | Low (scoping review; indirect outcomes) |
| Kurniawan et al. chronic-illness chatbot review [18] | Chronic disease management | Systematic review | Chatbots | Acceptability and effectiveness | Acceptability promising; efficacy evidence limited; insufficient technical documentation | Mirrors travel-medicine implementation gap | Low (systematic review; indirect to travel) |
| Iyer et al. preventive-care chatbot outreach [52] | US value-based care | Retrospective analysis | Chatbot outreach | Preventive care compliance | Chatbots underperformed phone calls overall but outperformed for diabetes care in 2023 | Selective and context-dependent efficacy | Low (single retrospective analysis; indirect to travel) |
| Peng et al. retrieval-augmented generation [49] | Multilingual medical | Comparative evaluation; 10 LLMs | RAG architectures | Source-grounded medical answer generation | RAG improves accuracy and generalises to unseen medical languages | Supports RAG as design principle | Low to moderate (comparative empirical study; indirect to travel) |
| AI failure mode | Travel medicine example | Potential patient safety consequence | Mitigation |
| False destination risk claim [11,14,16] | Incorrectly states that a specific region has no malaria risk | Omitted chemoprophylaxis or inadequate mosquito precautions | Retrieval-grounded malaria source [11,49], date-stamped destination data, clinician review |
| Outdated outbreak information [7,16,51] | Misses active yellow fever, polio, measles, dengue, or mpox advisory | Unvaccinated or underprepared traveller enters risk zone | Real-time public health feed, source timestamp, no model-memory-only outbreak advice |
| Contraindication miss [8,15] | Recommends live vaccine to immunocompromised traveller | Vaccine-derived illness or serious adverse event | Mandatory immune-status questions and hard-stop clinician review |
| Drug interaction error [8,15] | Ignores psychiatric history or interacting medication when discussing mefloquine | Neuropsychiatric adverse event or poor adherence | Medication reconciliation, contraindication checklist, pharmacist or clinician sign-off |
| False reassurance [14,48] | Tells a splenectomy patient that malaria risk is routine or low | Life-threatening malaria risk underestimated | High-risk condition trigger and escalation to specialist review |
| Incomplete history intake [4,8] | Does not ask about pregnancy, transplant, HIV, anticoagulation, allergy, prior vaccines, or itinerary details | Inappropriate vaccine, medication, or risk counselling | Structured intake before any recommendation |
| Hallucinated authority [14,15,16,50] | Fabricates a guideline, dose, requirement, or clinic policy | Clinician or patient follows non-existent recommendation | Source-linked output only [49]; block unsupported claims |
| Equity failure [3,37,38,42,43,44] | Older adult or low-literacy traveller cannot use tool | Exclusion of high-risk groups from pre-consultation support | Assisted use, multilingual and plain-language modes, non-digital alternative |
| Overtriage or undertriage [48] | Routes low-acuity question to emergency or vice versa | Resource misuse or delayed care | Calibrated triage thresholds, clinician review of escalations |
| Workflow stage | AI function | Failure mode or escalation trigger | Governance requirement | Clinical owner |
| Booking | Collect itinerary, departure date, destinations, activities, and baseline medical information [4,8] | Pregnancy, immunosuppression, transplant, HIV, splenectomy, complex itinerary, or departure within 14 days | Privacy notice, minimum data capture, audit of intake completion [26,27] | Clinic lead |
| Waiting room | Provide general education and elicit patient questions [5,17,46] | Patient asks for vaccine clearance, medication prescription, diagnosis, or high-risk advice | Source-grounded educational mode only [49]; no prescribing | Travel clinician |
| Consultation | Produce structured summary of risks, missing data, and guideline prompts [4,12,34] | Missing vaccine history, unclear immune status, drug interaction, live-vaccine question | Clinician verifies every recommendation before action [5,15] | Travel clinician |
| After-visit | Reinforce clinician-approved plan, vaccine schedule, malaria instructions, and behavioural advice [5,52] | Patient reports adverse reaction, fever, pregnancy, itinerary change, or medication intolerance | Escalation pathway and documented clinician-approved content | Clinic protocol owner |
| During travel | Provide emergency numbers, reminder prompts, and red-flag advice [5,11] | Fever after malaria exposure, animal bite, severe diarrhoea, respiratory distress, sexual exposure, injury | Immediate seek-care advice; no autonomous diagnosis | Traveller support protocol |
| Quality assurance | Audit AI outputs and user feedback [13,14,15,16,34] | Hallucination, outdated source, unsafe omission, inequitable use pattern | Monthly sample audit, incident register, model-version log, safety review board [22,23,26] | Clinical governance committee |
| Jurisdiction | Regulatory signal | Relevance to travel-medicine AI |
| United States FDA [22] | FDA describes AI/ML in Software as a Medical Device as requiring lifecycle management and appropriate premarket pathways such as 510(k), De Novo, or premarket approval depending on intended use | A tool that merely educates may be lower risk, while a tool that drives vaccine or medication recommendations may approach regulated clinical decision support |
| Australia TGA [23] | TGA regulates software when it meets the medical-device definition under section 41BD of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, and developers of AI-enabled medical device software may be manufacturers or sponsors | Australian travel clinics should assess intended use, claims, risk class, sponsor obligations, and post-market monitoring before deploying AI decision tools |
| European Union AI Act Article 6 [24] | Article 6 classifies AI as high-risk when it meets product safety conditions or falls within Annex III categories, with exemptions only where it does not pose significant risk to health, safety, or fundamental rights | Travel AI affecting health decisions may require high-risk analysis, especially if it materially influences clinical recommendations |
| European Union AI Act Annex III [25] | Annex III includes systems related to healthcare service eligibility, health insurance risk assessment, emergency healthcare triage, and health-risk assessment in migration/border contexts | A travel-health AI tool handling triage or health-risk classification should be assessed for high-risk obligations and documentation requirements |
| WHO AI ethics guidance [26] | Six consensus principles: protect autonomy, promote human well-being and safety, ensure transparency and explainability, foster responsibility and accountability, ensure inclusiveness and equity, and promote responsive and sustainable AI | Travel-medicine AI deployment should map governance to these principles |
| WHO Global Strategy on Digital Health [27] | Emphasises equity, scalability, privacy, security, and country readiness as prerequisites for digital health deployment | Travel-medicine AI should be evaluated against these macro-level prerequisites |
| Traveller characteristic | Risk category | Required action |
| Pregnancy or planning pregnancy [8,11] | Live-vaccine and antimalarial contraindication risk | Mandatory clinician review; AI restricted to information-gathering |
| Immunocompromise (transplant, advanced HIV, immunosuppressive therapy, asplenia) [8] | Vaccine-derived illness and severe travel infection risk | Mandatory specialist review; AI must not advise on vaccine eligibility |
| Anticoagulation or unstable cardiovascular disease [8] | Drug interaction and travel-stress risk | Clinician review of medication and itinerary |
| Severe allergy or anaphylaxis history [8] | Vaccine reaction risk | Clinician-led vaccine selection and observation planning |
| Complex psychiatric history [8] | Mefloquine and other neuropsychiatric medication risk | Clinician-led prophylaxis selection |
| Travel within two weeks [10] | Inadequate time for vaccine schedules | Triaged clinician review and accelerated schedule |
| Outbreak-zone travel [7,11,51] | Time-sensitive epidemiology beyond model knowledge | Real-time public health source and clinician review |
| Live vaccine clearance request | Direct contraindication assessment | Clinician-only decision |
| Malaria prophylaxis selection request [11] | Resistance, drug-interaction, comorbidity-specific decision | Clinician-only prescribing |
| Post-exposure care after animal bite, sexual exposure, or needlestick | Time-critical post-exposure prophylaxis | Direct clinician contact, emergency services if needed |
| Severe digital literacy or language barriers [3,37,38,42,43,44] | Equity and comprehension risk | Assisted use and non-digital alternative |
| First Nations Australian or Pacific Islander traveller in absence of culturally adapted content [37,38,41,42,43,44] | Cultural safety and trust | Co-designed clinician pathway; not generic AI as primary interaction |
| Priority | Study or activity | Rationale | Suggested outcomes |
| Immediate | Hallucination audit of travel-medicine chatbots against CDC Yellow Book 2026 [8,9], WHO malaria guidance [11], and ISTM advice [10] | High urgency and feasible with simulated cases [14,15,16] | Accuracy, harmful omission, hallucination, citation validity, refusal behaviour |
| Immediate | Prospective structured intake trial in one travel clinic [3,4,12] | High feasibility and direct workflow relevance | Consultation time, missing-data rate, clinician satisfaction, patient understanding |
| Near-term | Stepped-wedge trial across multiple travel clinics following CONSORT-AI/SPIRIT-AI [31,32,45] | Tests implementation under real-world variation | Vaccine uptake, malaria prophylaxis appropriateness, advice adherence, safety events |
| Near-term | Equity study in older adults, low-digital-literacy travellers, VFR travellers, First Nations Australians, and Pacific Islander travellers [37,38,41,42,43,44] | Addresses likely access asymmetry | Usability, completion, comprehension, preference, assisted-use need, cultural safety |
| Longer-term | EHR-integrated retrieval-augmented generation system with outbreak-feed integration [7,49,51] | Highest potential but greater regulatory and privacy burden [22,23,24,25] | Recommendation concordance, auditability, privacy incidents, model drift |
| Longer-term | Multilingual validation across common traveller origin languages [49] | Needed for global travel medicine | Translation fidelity, cultural appropriateness, safety equivalence |
| Longer-term | Travel-medicine AI prediction models for risk stratification, reported per TRIPOD+AI [33] | Enables individualised pre-travel risk advice | Discrimination, calibration, fairness, decision-curve utility |
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