🩺 AI system diagnoses patients four times better than experienced doctors

• The AI tool correctly diagnosed 85.5 percent of cases compared to doctors' 20 percent.
• The system ordered fewer scans and tests to reach the correct diagnosis than human doctors.
• Microsoft tested the AI model against 21 experienced doctors with 5-20 years of experience.

Microsoft conducted a study where an AI diagnostic system was tested against 21 experienced physicians. The test used real-world patient cases from 304 patients published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The AI tool correctly diagnosed up to 85.5 percent of cases. This is approximately four times higher than the group of doctors from the United Kingdom and United States, who had between five and 20 years of experience. The doctors achieved an average of 20 percent correct diagnosis.

The analysis showed that the model was cheaper than human doctors by ordering fewer scans and tests to reach the correct diagnosis.

How the AI model works

Microsoft's AI system made diagnoses by mimicking a doctor's process. The system collected patient details, ordered tests, and then narrowed down to a medical diagnosis.

A "gatekeeper agent" had information from the patient case studies. It interacted with a "diagnostic orchestrator" that asked questions and ordered tests. The system received results from real-world workups.

The company tested the system with several AI models, including GPT, Llama, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek.

OpenAI's o3 model, which is integrated into ChatGPT, correctly solved 85.5 percent of patient cases.

AI can combine breadth and depth

Microsoft stated that AI models can reason through complex diagnostic problems that confuse doctors. Doctors specialize in their fields but are not experts in every aspect of medicine.

AI can combine both breadth and depth of expertise and demonstrates clinical reasoning capabilities that exceed individual physicians' in many aspects of clinical reasoning.

Microsoft does not see AI as a replacement for doctors in the near future. The tools will instead help physicians automate some routine tasks, personalize patients' treatment, and speed up diagnoses.

Study limitations

The researchers published their findings online as a preprint article, meaning it has not yet undergone peer review.

There were important limitations, particularly that the AI tool has only been tested for complicated health problems, not more common everyday issues.

The panel of doctors also worked without access to their colleagues, textbooks, or other tools they would typically use when making diagnoses. This was done to enable a fair comparison to human performance.

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