Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39779927›Full record

ArticleNature medicine2025

A generalist medical language model for disease diagnosis assistance.

Xiaohong Liu, Hao Liu, Guoxing Yang, Zeyu Jiang, Shuguang Cui, Zhaoze Zhang, Huan Wang, Liyuan Tao, Yongchang Sun, Zhu Song and 14 more

Abstract read
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In one paragraph

Article in Nature medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
88citing papers in PubMed, 2 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

88 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

24 authors.

Xiaohong Liu *State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Hao Liu *Department of Orthopedics, Peking University Third Hospital & Beijing Key Laboratory of Spinal Disease & Engineering Research Center of Bone and Joint Precision Medicine, Beijing, China.
Guoxing Yang *State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0009-1056-2430
Zeyu Jiang *State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Shuguang Cui *School of Science and Engineering (SSE), Future Network of Intelligence Institute (FNii) and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Future Networks of Intelligence, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2608-775X
Zhaoze ZhangDepartment of Orthopedics, Peking University Third Hospital & Beijing Key Laboratory of Spinal Disease & Engineering Research Center of Bone and Joint Precision Medicine, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0006-0711-9508
Huan WangDepartment of Orthopedics, Peking University Third Hospital & Beijing Key Laboratory of Spinal Disease & Engineering Research Center of Bone and Joint Precision Medicine, Beijing, China.
Liyuan TaoResearch Center of Clinical Epidemiology, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China.
Yongchang SunDepartment of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Peking University Third Hospital and Research Center for Chronic Airway Diseases, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
Zhu SongDepartment of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Peking University Third Hospital and Research Center for Chronic Airway Diseases, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
Tianpei HongDepartment of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5744-5129
Jin YangDepartment of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6004-955X
Tianrun GaoState Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Jiangjiang ZhangState Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Xiaohu LiState Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Jing ZhangDepartment of Cardiology, The First College of Clinical Medical Science, China Three Gorges University and Yichang Central People's Hospital, Yichang, China.
Ye SangDepartment of Cardiology, The First College of Clinical Medical Science, China Three Gorges University and Yichang Central People's Hospital, Yichang, China.
Zhao YangPeking University First Hospital and Research Center of Public Policy, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Kanmin XueNuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0065-9131
Song WuSouth China Hospital, Medical School, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3504-1630
Ping ZhangState Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0269-104X
Jian YangDepartment of Cardiology, The First College of Clinical Medical Science, China Three Gorges University and Yichang Central People's Hospital, Yichang, China. yangjian@ctgu.edu.cn.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1391-1482
Chunli SongDepartment of Orthopedics, Peking University Third Hospital & Beijing Key Laboratory of Spinal Disease & Engineering Research Center of Bone and Joint Precision Medicine, Beijing, China. schl@bjmu.edu.cn.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3690-9457
Guangyu WangState Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China. guangyu.wang24@gmail.com.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1312-884X

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China (National Science Foundation of China) 61931024, 92359202, 12326610National Natural Science Foundation of China (National Science Foundation of China) 62272055, 82330078, 81874010Wellcome Trust (Wellcome) 216593/Z/19/Z
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The delivery of accurate diagnoses is crucial in healthcare and represents the gateway to appropriate and timely treatment. Although recent large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in few-shot or zero-shot learning, their effectiveness in clinical diagnosis remains unproven. Here we present MedFound, a generalist medical language model with 176 billion parameters, pre-trained on a large-scale corpus derived from diverse medical text and real-world clinical records. We further fine-tuned MedFound to learn physicians' inferential diagnosis with a self-bootstrapping strategy-based chain-of-thought approach and introduced a unified preference alignment framework to align it with standard clinical practice. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our medical LLM outperforms other baseline LLMs and specialized models in in-distribution (common diseases), out-of-distribution (external validation) and long-tailed distribution (rare diseases) scenarios across eight specialties. Further ablation studies indicate the effectiveness of key components in our medical LLM training approach. We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the clinical applicability of LLMs for diagnosis involving artificial intelligence (AI) versus physician comparison, AI-assistance study and human evaluation framework. Our proposed framework incorporates eight clinical evaluation metrics, covering capabilities such as medical record summarization, diagnostic reasoning and risk management. Our findings demonstrate the model's feasibility in assisting physicians with disease diagnosis as part of the clinical workflow.

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LanguageArtificial IntelligenceHumans

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.