Medical Reasoning

Medical reasoning asks whether AI can move beyond recalling medical facts to make sound decisions from clinical evidence, patient-specific conditions, images, signals, and longitudinal records. Common approaches include retrieval-augmented generation, structured reasoning and knowledge graphs, specialist-agent collaboration, and fine-tuning with step-level rewards or clinician-designed rubrics. Benchmarks increasingly test multi-step inference, image and ECG interpretation, rare cases, medication safety, and whether conclusions change appropriately when patient details change. A central challenge is that correct answers and persuasive explanations do not guarantee faithful reasoning or reliable clinical decisions, so evaluation must examine evidence use, intermediate steps, and performance on authentic cases.