Landmark test of clinical reasoning finds AI outperformed physicians, raising bar for more serious testing
www.eurekalert.org
In a new study, researchers found a large language model (LLM) outperformed physicians across many common clinical reasoning tasks including emergency room decisions, identifying likely diagnoses, and choosing next steps in management.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1090825/study-finds-ai-outperforms-doctors-in-emergency-diagnoses

Study.

In one of the largest studies to compare artificial intelligence and physicians on a wide array of clinical reasoning tasks including real emergency department data, a team of physicians and computer scientists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center evaluated whether an AI system could do what physicians do every day: review a messy patient chart and use that information to determine diagnosis and next steps.

In a new study published April 30, 2026 in Science, co-senior authors Arjun (Raj) Manrai, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at HMS and Adam Rodman, MD, MPH, a hospitalist and clinical researcher at BIDMC and team report that a large language model (LLM) outperformed physicians across many common clinical reasoning tasks including emergency room decisions, identifying likely diagnoses, and choosing next steps in management.