_version_ 1866918145186332672
author Olatunji, Tobi
Nimo, Charles
Owodunni, Abraham
Abdullahi, Tassallah
Ayodele, Emmanuel
Sanni, Mardhiyah
Aka, Chinemelu
Omofoye, Folafunmi
Yuehgoh, Foutse
Faniran, Timothy
Dossou, Bonaventure F. P.
Yekini, Moshood
Kemp, Jonas
Heller, Katherine
Omeke, Jude Chidubem
MD, Chidi Asuzu
Etori, Naome A.
Ndiaye, Aimérou
Okoh, Ifeoma
Ocansey, Evans Doe
Kinara, Wendy
Best, Michael
Essa, Irfan
Moore, Stephen Edward
Fourie, Chris
Asiedu, Mercy Nyamewaa
author_facet Olatunji, Tobi
Nimo, Charles
Owodunni, Abraham
Abdullahi, Tassallah
Ayodele, Emmanuel
Sanni, Mardhiyah
Aka, Chinemelu
Omofoye, Folafunmi
Yuehgoh, Foutse
Faniran, Timothy
Dossou, Bonaventure F. P.
Yekini, Moshood
Kemp, Jonas
Heller, Katherine
Omeke, Jude Chidubem
MD, Chidi Asuzu
Etori, Naome A.
Ndiaye, Aimérou
Okoh, Ifeoma
Ocansey, Evans Doe
Kinara, Wendy
Best, Michael
Essa, Irfan
Moore, Stephen Edward
Fourie, Chris
Asiedu, Mercy Nyamewaa
contents Recent advancements in large language model(LLM) performance on medical multiple choice question (MCQ) benchmarks have stimulated interest from healthcare providers and patients globally. Particularly in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) facing acute physician shortages and lack of specialists, LLMs offer a potentially scalable pathway to enhance healthcare access and reduce costs. However, their effectiveness in the Global South, especially across the African continent, remains to be established. In this work, we introduce AfriMed-QA, the first large scale Pan-African English multi-specialty medical Question-Answering (QA) dataset, 15,000 questions (open and closed-ended) sourced from over 60 medical schools across 16 countries, covering 32 medical specialties. We further evaluate 30 LLMs across multiple axes including correctness and demographic bias. Our findings show significant performance variation across specialties and geographies, MCQ performance clearly lags USMLE (MedQA). We find that biomedical LLMs underperform general models and smaller edge-friendly LLMs struggle to achieve a passing score. Interestingly, human evaluations show a consistent consumer preference for LLM answers and explanations when compared with clinician answers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_15640
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AfriMed-QA: A Pan-African, Multi-Specialty, Medical Question-Answering Benchmark Dataset
Olatunji, Tobi
Nimo, Charles
Owodunni, Abraham
Abdullahi, Tassallah
Ayodele, Emmanuel
Sanni, Mardhiyah
Aka, Chinemelu
Omofoye, Folafunmi
Yuehgoh, Foutse
Faniran, Timothy
Dossou, Bonaventure F. P.
Yekini, Moshood
Kemp, Jonas
Heller, Katherine
Omeke, Jude Chidubem
MD, Chidi Asuzu
Etori, Naome A.
Ndiaye, Aimérou
Okoh, Ifeoma
Ocansey, Evans Doe
Kinara, Wendy
Best, Michael
Essa, Irfan
Moore, Stephen Edward
Fourie, Chris
Asiedu, Mercy Nyamewaa
Computation and Language
Recent advancements in large language model(LLM) performance on medical multiple choice question (MCQ) benchmarks have stimulated interest from healthcare providers and patients globally. Particularly in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) facing acute physician shortages and lack of specialists, LLMs offer a potentially scalable pathway to enhance healthcare access and reduce costs. However, their effectiveness in the Global South, especially across the African continent, remains to be established. In this work, we introduce AfriMed-QA, the first large scale Pan-African English multi-specialty medical Question-Answering (QA) dataset, 15,000 questions (open and closed-ended) sourced from over 60 medical schools across 16 countries, covering 32 medical specialties. We further evaluate 30 LLMs across multiple axes including correctness and demographic bias. Our findings show significant performance variation across specialties and geographies, MCQ performance clearly lags USMLE (MedQA). We find that biomedical LLMs underperform general models and smaller edge-friendly LLMs struggle to achieve a passing score. Interestingly, human evaluations show a consistent consumer preference for LLM answers and explanations when compared with clinician answers.
title AfriMed-QA: A Pan-African, Multi-Specialty, Medical Question-Answering Benchmark Dataset
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.15640