arXiv Computation and Language

Benchmarking Clinical Decision Pathway Adherence in Large Language Models

The paper introduces MEGA-CDP, a benchmark designed to evaluate medical large language models (LLMs) on their ability to generate clinical decision pathways (CDPs) that adhere to clinical practice guidelines. MEGA-CDP is built from 2,274 English and Chinese guidelines, producing 42,353 clinical cases with explicit reference CDPs, and supports both single-turn and multi-turn interactions. Experiments on 16 LLMs reveal that reliable guideline adherence remains difficult, underscoring the need for CDP-focused evaluation and the potential of MEGA-CDP to advance medical LLM performance.

arXiv AI
Sep 15

A primer on evaluation methods for large language models in healthcare

arXiv:2609.14819v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have a growing range of applications in medicine, and their evaluation is critical for ensuring they provide benefit and...

By Suzannah E McKinney, Phuc Vu, Samuel A Justice, Christopher Humphries, Alyssa Pradhan, Timothy J Keyes, Bernardo C Bizzo, Keith J Dreyer, Sarah F Mercaldo, James M Hillis
arXiv AI
Jul 16

Ask Before You Diagnose: Safe-Psych, a Sequential Evaluation Benchmark for LLMs in Psychiatry

arXiv:2607. 13036v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for decision support in healthcare, but clinical evidence is often incomplete or evolving.

By Oriana Presacan, Andreea Grama, Larisa Irimin\u{a}, Alireza Nik, Jaya Ojha, Vajira Thambawita, Ciprian I. B\u{a}cil\u{a}, Bogdan Ionescu, Michael A. Riegler
arXiv AI
Oct 1

Sense and Sensitivity: Benchmarking LLM Clinical Triage Recommendations with Physician Experts

The paper introduces a benchmark of over 6,000 clinical triage scenarios, 7,000 physician annotations, and 225,000 large language model (LLM) responses to assess how LLMs perform under realistic variations in clinical text. The study finds that LLMs tend to recommend unnecessary care more often than physicians, especially when the input text is perturbed, and that LLM recommendations are more sensitive to gender and tone changes than human recommendations. These findings underscore the importance of deployment‑oriented evaluations that reflect expert physician behavior.

By Abinitha Gourabathina, Haoran Zhang, Yuexing Hao, Walter Gerych, Marzyeh Ghassemi
arXiv AI
4d ago

Right Answer, Wrong Reason: Accuracy, Consistency, and Consensus Are Misleading Indicators of LLM Faithfulness in Clinical Decision Support

The paper introduces three interpretable metrics—Explanation Stability Index (ESI), Causal Faithfulness Score (CFS), and Perturbation Stability Score (PSS)—to assess the faithfulness of large language models (LLMs) in clinical decision support. Evaluating six LLMs on 150 MedQA-USMLE questions, the study finds that only 23.3% of cited clinical concepts are causally necessary, and that correct answers often have lower CFS than incorrect ones, with answer consistency negatively predicting faithfulness. These findings suggest that accuracy, consistency, and consensus are incomplete safety signals for clinical decision-making support.

By Bharath Kumar Bolla, Chaitali Deb Purkayastha, Vishnu Surya Reddy Nandi
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Retrieval-Augmented Agentic Rubric Generation for Reliable Medical Response Evaluation

The paper introduces a retrieval‑augmented multi‑agent framework that automatically generates instance‑specific evaluation rubrics for medical language models. By retrieving authoritative medical evidence, decomposing it into atomic facts, and combining these with user interaction constraints, the system produces fine‑grained criteria that outperform GPT‑4o on HealthBench and LLMEval‑Med. The generated rubrics also guide response refinement, improving medical LLM output quality by 9.2%.

By Yinzhu Chen, Abdine Maiga, Hossein A. Rahmani, Emine Yilmaz
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 17

Large Language Models Versus Physicians in Traditional Chinese Medicine: A Real-World Clinical Case Evaluation

arXiv:2609.17544v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being explored for clinical applications, yet their assessment for real-world traditional Chinese medicin...

By Jiacheng Xie, Xiaoting Tang, Yang Yu, Jinpu Li, Shouli Li, Congcong Jing, Yantao Yang, Zhiyong Zhao, Ziyang Zhang, Qilin Song, Guanghui An, Dong Xu
arXiv AI
Aug 25

SDoH-Aware Narrative Anchoring Bias in Medical LLMs for Trustworthy Clinical Decision Support

The paper investigates how medical large language models (LLMs) may exhibit narrative anchoring bias when presented with the same clinical case in different patient voices. Using the NarrativeShield SDoH MedQA dataset, the authors evaluate three Qwen2.5 instruction‑tuned LLMs (1.5B, 3B, 7B) on 300 clinical cases, reporting metrics such as persona‑level accuracy, counterfactual consistency, correct consistency, and narrative sensitivity error. The 7B model achieves the highest accuracy (56.33 %) and correct consistency (40.33 %), yet narrative sensitivity errors remain substantial (31.67 %).

By Ahnaf Atef Choudhury, Ramkrishna Saha
arXiv AI
Jul 10

Towards Precision Therapy in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Clinical-Reasoning LLM for Risk Stratification and Treatment Guidance

arXiv:2607. 08602v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common malignancy and a leading cause of cancer-related mortality.

By Peng Cui, Jitao Wang, Siyan Xue, Yao Huang, Haoming Xia, Dong Li, Dengxiang Liu, Weilin Wang, Liping Liu, Leida Zhang, Yunfu Cui, Tao Peng, Daolin Ji, Haitao Zhao, Wei Zhang, Xiaojuan Wang, Weijie Ma, Zongren Ding, Jinlong Li, Yuan Ding, Jiajing Zhao, Zhiyu Chen, Chengkun Yang, Ziyue Huang, Jiaqi Liu, Fusheng Liu, Yang Zhou, Xiaojuan Wang, Zhongquan Sun, Shiyun Bao, Xiaojun Wang, Ming Yang, Guangxin Li, Bin Shu, Yong Liao, Hongxuan Li, Yao Tang, Shizhong Yang, Yongyi Zeng, Yufeng Yuan, Yinpeng Dong, Jihui Hao, Jun Zhu, Jiahong Dong