cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1090825/study-finds-ai-outperforms-doctors-in-emergency-diagnoses
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.
Competing interests:
A.R. is a Visiting Researcher at Google DeepMind. E.H. is employed by Microsoft. J.C. is cofounder of Reaction Explorer LLC, a paid medical expert witness from Elite Experts, and received one-time honoraria or travel expenses for invited presentations by Insitro, General Reinsurance Corporation, AASCIF, and other industry conferences, academic institutions, and health systems. Z.K. discloses royalties from Oakstone Publishing and Wolters Kluwer. A.O. discloses employment of his spouse by Exact Sciences. R.-E.A. is employed by the Massachusetts Medical Society and has consulted for Lumeris.
Harvard told us in the 70s sugar was not harmful, funded by sugar companies.
some pretty big error bars here…