Health AI Central
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Nat Biomed Eng2026June 23, 2026Journal Article

Large reasoning models as thinking machines for medicine.

Hong-Yu Zhou1, Adam Rodman2, Peng Liu3, Pranav Rajpurkar4, Tony Y Hu3, Tien Yin Wong3,5, Eric J Topol6
1School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. hongyu.zhou.ai@gmail.com.
2Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
3School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
4Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
5Beijing Visual Science and Translational Eye Research Institute (BERI), School of Clinical Medicine, Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital Eye Center, Tsinghua Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
6Scripps Research Translational Institute, Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA, USA.
PubMed DOI

Abstract

Conventional artificial intelligence has achieved remarkable feats in identifying associations and predictive patterns, yet its limitations in causal reasoning present a hurdle for complex clinical challenges demanding deep professional expertise. Large reasoning models are creating opportunities to move beyond correlation towards emulating the analytical processes of humans. Applied to the practi…

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