Clinical decision-making agents can benefit from reusing prior decision experience. However, many memory-augmented methods store experiences as independent records without explicit relational structure, which may introduce noisy retrieval, unreliable reuse, and in some cases even hurt performance compared to direct LLM inference. We propose GSEM (Graph-based Self-Evolving Memory), a clinical memory framework that organizes clinical experiences into a dual-layer memory graph, capturing both the decision structure within each experience and the relational dependencies across experiences, and supporting applicability-aware retrieval and online feedback-driven calibration of node quality and edge weights. Across MedR-Bench and MedAgentsBench with two LLM backbones, GSEM achieves the highest average accuracy among all baselines, reaching 70.90% and 69.24% with DeepSeek-V3.2 and Qwen3.5-35B, respectively. Code is available at https://github.com/xhan1022/gsem.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Two motivating failure cases of experience-augmented clinical reasoning. Boundary Failure (top): an experience is retrieved based on partial condition match, while critical boundary conditions are ignored. Collaboration Failure (bottom): conflicting experiences without joint-use value are co-retrieved, leading to incoherent guidance for the final decision. A detailed clinical case study is provided in Appendix F .
Figure 2: Overall architecture of GSEM, illustrating the three-stage pipeline across Memory Construction, Memory Retrieval, and Memory Evolution.
Model
Method
MedR-Bench
MedAgentsBench
AVG
Diag
Treat
MedBullets
MedQA
MedMCQA
MedExQA
MedXpertQA
DeepSeek-V3.2
Vanilla
87.87
57.43
48.31
74.62
40.00
28.00
31.00
64.78
Naïve RAG
92.40
84.46
47.19
74.84
38.00
29.00
27.00
68.56
GraphRAG
90.27
87.16
42.70
68.93
38.00
27.00
24.00
65.61
Mem0
86.63
57.43
39.32
73.74
36.00
26.00
29.00
62.96
Mem0 g
83.28
56.08
50.56
74.62
37.00
29.00
27.00
63.19
Table 1: Main results on MedR-Bench and MedAgentsBench. Acc denotes outcome accuracy (%). All MedAgentsBench results report Pass@1 accuracy (%). Best results are bold and second-best are underlined .
Method
MedR-Bench
Diagnosis / Acc
Treatment / Acc
GSEM
94.22
94.59
w/ SE(50)
97.26
97.30
w/ SE(150)
97.87
95.95
w/ SE(250)
96.96
97.30
Table 2: Effect of the number of online evolution updates on GSEM performance. Results are reported after online memory evolution using different numbers of samples. Bold indicates the best performance.
Setting
Diag.
Treat.
MedBullets
w/o entity_recall
92.71
92.57
24.00
w/o embedding_recall
93.62
83.78
10.00
w/o multi_seed_retrieval
91.79
92.57
23.00
GSEM
94.22
94.59
34.00
Table 3: Ablation results on diagnosis (Diag.) / treatment (Treat.) accuracy and QA benchmark MedBullets. Bold indicates the best performance per task.
Figure 3: Per-dimension reasoning quality (Efficiency, Factuality, Completeness, and R (AVG)) on MedR-Bench diagnosis and treatment tasks. Error bars denote two-sided 95% confidence intervals.
Method
MedR-Bench
Diagnosis / R
Treatment / R
GraphRAG
86.9±3.6
89.0±5.0
A-Mem
78.8±4.4
83.9±5.9
FLEX
77.0±4.5
77.3±6.7
GSEM
87.4±3.6
84.3±5.9
Table 4: Reasoning quality on MedR-Bench (mean ± CI). R denotes the aggregated reasoning quality score. Bold indicates the best performance.
Retriever + Generator
Diag. / Acc
Treat. / Acc
Qwen + Qwen
91.49
66.89
Qwen + DeepSeek
96.66
95.95
DeepSeek + Qwen
87.84
61.49
DeepSeek + DeepSeek
94.22
94.59
Table 5: Effect of model size on GSEM by swapping the generation model and the retrieval model. Bold indicates the best performance.
Appendix figures & tables21 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Figure 4: Distribution of node quality Q in self-evolving stage.
Figure 5: Distribution of relation weight W in self-evolving stage.
Figure 6: Examples of experiences, illustrating the four-field structure (ci,si,zi,Qi) defined in Section 3.2 .
Figure 7: Visualization of a subgraph in the entity layer Gent . Nodes correspond to typed decision entities, and edges capture internal reasoning flows within and across experiences.
Figure 8: Visualization of a subgraph in the experience layer Gexp . Node size encodes experience quality Qi , and edge weights reflect learned inter-experience associations.
Method
Efficiency
Factuality
Completeness
Diagnosis/R (AVG)
GraphRAG
0.983±.014
0.842±.039
0.782±.045
0.869±.036
A-Mem
0.983±.014
0.610±.053
0.770±.045
0.788±.044
FLEX
0.983±.014
0.588±.053
0.740±.047
0.770±.045
GSEM
0.978±.016
0.852±.038
0.793±.044
0.874±.036
Appendix
Table 6: Per-dimension reasoning quality on MedR-Bench Diagnosis (n=329) with 95% CI.
Method
Efficiency
Factuality
Completeness
Treatment/R (AVG)
GraphRAG
0.993±.013
0.918±.044
0.760±.069
0.890±.050
A-Mem
0.992±.014
0.815±.063
0.709±.073
0.839±.059
FLEX
0.990±.016
0.662±.076
0.667±.076
0.773±.067
GSEM
0.989±.017
0.836±.060
0.704±.074
0.843±.059
Appendix
Table 7: Per-dimension reasoning quality on MedR-Bench Treatment (n=148) with 95% CI.
GSEM
ReMe
Retrieved Exps
exp_0907: history of prior radiotherapy + new progressive deficit in irradiated field; exp_0858: undifferentiated sarcoma with small round cell morphology, pre-treatment planning; + 6 other sarcoma-related experiences
exp1 : interpreting conflicting clinical data (PET-negative lesions vs. known progressive disease); exp2 : mixed biomarker findings (driver mutation + PD-L1) in metastatic cancer
Key Steps
Step 2: Recognizes abscopal effect as immune-mediated response. Step 4: Decides close observation is appropriate while spontaneous regression is ongoing; defers systemic therapy unless progression occurs.
Step 4: exp1 frames spontaneous regression as “conflicting data” and overrides it. Step 5–6: Proceeds to select third-line systemic therapy (pazopanib) despite ongoing regression.
Final Answer
Close surveillance with PET-CT in 6–8 weeks; initiate anti-PD1 immunotherapy only if regression halts or progresses. (Correct)
Initiate pazopanib (800 mg/day) immediately as third-line therapy; refer to immunotherapy clinical trial. (Incorrect)
Appendix
Table 8: Case 1 (PMC11631726): Boundary Failure. A 50-year-old male with metastatic undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS) showing spontaneous regression attributed to the abscopal effect after multiple surgeries, radiotherapy, and two lines of chemotherapy. Ground truth: continue close follow-up leveraging the abscopal effect; do not initiate systemic therapy while regression is ongoing.
GSEM
ReMe
Retrieved Exps
exp_1315: elderly male with hemodynamic collapse and retroperitoneal bleeding; exp_0769: acute abdomen with pneumoperitoneum and hollow viscus perforation; exp_0796: hospitalized patient with sudden severe abdominal pain and hemodynamic instability; + 3 other abdominal emergency experiences
exp1 : generating surgical steps for acute abdominal emergencies; exp2 : formulating treatment plans when explicit diagnoses are provided; exp3 : dental trauma classification discrepancy (irrelevant); exp5 : IBD with pre-established diagnosis (irrelevant)
Key Reasoning Steps
Step 3: Identifies IVC laceration and gastroduodenal artery as immediate hemorrhage sources. Step 3–4: Recognizes pancreaticoduodenal injury severity and concludes EPD is required for irreparable injury; includes Whipple resection in the definitive surgical plan.
Step 2: exp1 drives immediate surgical step listing without resolving EPD decision. Step 3: exp2 accepts injury list and moves to damage control; pancreaticoduodenal injury is deferred to staged reconstruction rather than addressed on-site.
Final Answer
Emergency damage control laparotomy including IVC repair, right nephrectomy, gastroduodenal artery ligation, and EPD (Whipple resection) for irreparable pancreatic head injury; postoperative ICU management. (Correct)
Emergency exploratory laparotomy with IVC repair, nephrectomy, liver packing; pancreaticoduodenal injury deferred with drainage and staged reconstruction after 24–48 hours. (Incorrect)
Appendix
Table 9: Case 2 (PMC11490744): Collaboration Failure. A 49-year-old male with blunt abdominal trauma, hemodynamic instability, and multiple organ injuries including irreparable pancreatic head and duodenal injuries. Ground truth: perform emergency pancreaticoduodenectomy (Whipple procedure) combined with IVC repair, right nephrectomy, adrenalectomy, cholecystectomy, and liver hemostasis.
Table 10: System prompt for Indication experience extraction.
Table 11: Human prompt for Indication experience extraction.
Table 12: System prompt for Contraindication divergence analysis.
Table 13: Human prompt for Contraindication divergence analysis.
Table 14: System prompt for Contraindication experience extraction.
Table 15: Human prompt for Contraindication experience extraction.
Table 16: System prompt for entity extraction.
Table 17: Human prompt for entity extraction.
Table 18: System prompt for role-edge structure extraction.
Table 19: Human prompt for role-edge structure extraction.
Table 20: System prompt for semantic similarity evaluation.
Table 21: Human prompt for semantic similarity evaluation.
Clinical decision-making is inherently experience-driven: physicians progressively refine their reasoning by synthesizing patient history, multimodal observations, and prior diagnostic experiences across interactions. In contrast, current multimodal large language model (MLLM)-based medical AI agents largely operate as stateless inference systems, generating decisions independently for each interaction without retaining or internalizing experiential knowledge. This discrepancy limits their ability to progressively improve reasoning reliability through usage and adapt to longitudinal patient contexts in real-world clinical workflows. In this study, we propose Medical Structured Multimodal Memory (MSM-Mem), an agentic memory framework that enables medical AI agents to evolve through accumulated clinical experiences. MSM-Mem organizes heterogeneous clinical experiences into semantic, episodic, and visual memory and incrementally updates them during inference, allowing the agent to retrieve prior experiences to inform current reasoning and progressively refine decision-making over time. Evaluations on MoE-LLaVA backbones demonstrate consistent performance improve- ments with further gains observed through continued usage. In general, MSM-Mem offers a viable pathway toward medical AI agents capable of evolving their reasoning competence in a manner analogous to the way clinicians learn from practice over time.
Md Asaduzzaman Jabin, Khoa Le, Lin Zhao +1
University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA · New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA
Medical agent systems are increasingly expected to support interactive clinical decision making rather than only static question answering. In such settings, effective agents must reuse prior experience across evolving cases, yet existing memory mechanisms often retain raw historical traces that are redundant, noisy, and difficult to govern. More importantly, they rarely distinguish which memories are truly useful for future reasoning. This limits their ability to accumulate compact and reliable experience for long-horizon clinical reasoning. To close this gap, we propose SkeMex, a post-deployment self-evolution framework that improves medical agents through a skill-based memory without updating model weights. SkeMex distills informative interaction trajectories into structured skills that encode reusable procedural knowledge, and organizes them into a multi-branch repository spanning general, task-specific, and action-level experience. To determine which memories should be reused and retained, SkeMex estimates context-dependent utility from environment feedback and uses it to guide value-aware retrieval and repository governance. A closed-loop ``Read--Write--Assess--Govern" lifecycle further supports continual evolution by writing new skills, updating utilities, promoting useful memories, and removing harmful entries. Experiments across diverse clinical tasks show that SkeMex consistently outperforms representative memory-based agents in both offline and online settings. It also generalizes across model backbones and supports transferable skill memory. All data and code will be released publicly.
Haoran Sun, Wenjie Li, Yujie Zhang +8
Fudan University · Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory · University of Science and Technology of China +1
Large language model (LLM) driven multi-agent systems have shown promise in complex clinical reasoning, yet existing approaches rely on static strategies and lack persistent clinical memory, preventing self-evolving from prior diagnostic successes and failures. We present EMR, a self-evolving medical multi-agent system via Experience Mining and Reuse. EMR introduces a hierarchical clinical experience library that organizes accumulated knowledge into three levels: clinical principles, diagnostic patterns, and representative cases. During inference, EMR emulates multidisciplinary consultation: a planner agent coordinates domain-specific department agents for specialized reasoning, while a summary agent synthesizes their analyses into a final decision. Critically, EMR automatically extracts correct diagnostic insights and failure-related warnings from multi-agent reasoning trajectories, incrementally updating the experience library to guide future cases. Experiments on medical reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that EMR consistently outperforms state-of-the-art medical multi-agent baselines. Further analysis reveals that the hierarchical experience enables cross-specialty generalization and transfer across diverse LLM backbones, offering a scalable and in
Dongsheng Shi, Yue Li, Xin Yi +1
East China Normal University · City University of Hong Kong