The Effect of LLM Assistance on Diagnostic Accuracy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

LLM assistance improves physicians' diagnostic accuracy by a small but significant margin of Hedges g = 0.22 across 42 studies, highlighting potential clinical benefits.

• Why it matters: Understanding how LLMs impact diagnostic accuracy is crucial as they become more integrated into healthcare, addressing the gap in systematic quantification of their effectiveness.
• What they did: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 42 peer-reviewed articles and preprints from 2020 to 2026 compared diagnostic accuracy with and without LLM assistance, analyzing 101 effect sizes.
• The result: LLM assistance enhances diagnostic accuracy, but variability across subgroups indicates the need for further research to determine optimal conditions for safe and effective use.