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Quantifying the Reasoning Abilities of LLMs on Real-world Clinical Cases

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arxiv 2503.04691 v2 pith:LBSTRZCL submitted 2025-03-06 cs.CL

Quantifying the Reasoning Abilities of LLMs on Real-world Clinical Cases

classification cs.CL
keywords reasoningllmsclinicaldeepseek-r1examinationadvancementscasescritical
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Recent advancements in reasoning-enhanced large language models (LLMs), such as DeepSeek-R1 and OpenAI-o3, have demonstrated significant progress. However, their application in professional medical contexts remains underexplored, particularly in evaluating the quality of their reasoning processes alongside final outputs. Here, we introduce MedR-Bench, a benchmarking dataset of 1,453 structured patient cases, annotated with reasoning references derived from clinical case reports. Spanning 13 body systems and 10 specialties, it includes both common and rare diseases. To comprehensively evaluate LLM performance, we propose a framework encompassing three critical examination recommendation, diagnostic decision-making, and treatment planning, simulating the entire patient care journey. To assess reasoning quality, we present the Reasoning Evaluator, a novel automated system that objectively scores free-text reasoning responses based on efficiency, actuality, and completeness using dynamic cross-referencing and evidence checks. Using this benchmark, we evaluate five state-of-the-art reasoning LLMs, including DeepSeek-R1, OpenAI-o3-mini, and Gemini-2.0-Flash Thinking, etc. Our results show that current LLMs achieve over 85% accuracy in relatively simple diagnostic tasks when provided with sufficient examination results. However, performance declines in more complex tasks, such as examination recommendation and treatment planning. While reasoning outputs are generally reliable, with factuality scores exceeding 90%, critical reasoning steps are frequently missed. These findings underscore both the progress and limitations of clinical LLMs. Notably, open-source models like DeepSeek-R1 are narrowing the gap with proprietary systems, highlighting their potential to drive accessible and equitable advancements in healthcare.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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