CliCARE: Grounding Large Language Models in Clinical Guidelines for Decision Support over Longitudinal Cancer Electronic Health Records

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Li, Dongchen, Liang, Jitao, Li, Wei, Wang, Xiaoyu, Cao, Longbing, Yu, Kun
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Li, Dongchen
Liang, Jitao
Li, Wei
Wang, Xiaoyu
Cao, Longbing
Yu, Kun
author_facet Li, Dongchen
Liang, Jitao
Li, Wei
Wang, Xiaoyu
Cao, Longbing
Yu, Kun
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) hold significant promise for improving clinical decision support and reducing physician burnout by synthesizing complex, longitudinal cancer Electronic Health Records (EHRs). However, their implementation in this critical field faces three primary challenges: the inability to effectively process the extensive length and fragmented nature of patient records for accurate temporal analysis; a heightened risk of clinical hallucination, as conventional grounding techniques such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) do not adequately incorporate process-oriented clinical guidelines; and unreliable evaluation metrics that hinder the validation of AI systems in oncology. To address these issues, we propose CliCARE, a framework for Grounding Large Language Models in Clinical Guidelines for Decision Support over Longitudinal Cancer Electronic Health Records. The framework operates by transforming unstructured, longitudinal EHRs into patient-specific Temporal Knowledge Graphs (TKGs) to capture long-range dependencies, and then grounding the decision support process by aligning these real-world patient trajectories with a normative guideline knowledge graph. This approach provides oncologists with evidence-grounded decision support by generating a high-fidelity clinical summary and an actionable recommendation. We validated our framework using large-scale, longitudinal data from a private Chinese cancer dataset and the public English MIMIC-IV dataset. In these settings, CliCARE significantly outperforms baselines, including leading long-context LLMs and Knowledge Graph-enhanced RAG methods. The clinical validity of our results is supported by a robust evaluation protocol, which demonstrates a high correlation with assessments made by oncologists.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_22533
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publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CliCARE: Grounding Large Language Models in Clinical Guidelines for Decision Support over Longitudinal Cancer Electronic Health Records
Li, Dongchen
Liang, Jitao
Li, Wei
Wang, Xiaoyu
Cao, Longbing
Yu, Kun
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) hold significant promise for improving clinical decision support and reducing physician burnout by synthesizing complex, longitudinal cancer Electronic Health Records (EHRs). However, their implementation in this critical field faces three primary challenges: the inability to effectively process the extensive length and fragmented nature of patient records for accurate temporal analysis; a heightened risk of clinical hallucination, as conventional grounding techniques such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) do not adequately incorporate process-oriented clinical guidelines; and unreliable evaluation metrics that hinder the validation of AI systems in oncology. To address these issues, we propose CliCARE, a framework for Grounding Large Language Models in Clinical Guidelines for Decision Support over Longitudinal Cancer Electronic Health Records. The framework operates by transforming unstructured, longitudinal EHRs into patient-specific Temporal Knowledge Graphs (TKGs) to capture long-range dependencies, and then grounding the decision support process by aligning these real-world patient trajectories with a normative guideline knowledge graph. This approach provides oncologists with evidence-grounded decision support by generating a high-fidelity clinical summary and an actionable recommendation. We validated our framework using large-scale, longitudinal data from a private Chinese cancer dataset and the public English MIMIC-IV dataset. In these settings, CliCARE significantly outperforms baselines, including leading long-context LLMs and Knowledge Graph-enhanced RAG methods. The clinical validity of our results is supported by a robust evaluation protocol, which demonstrates a high correlation with assessments made by oncologists.
title CliCARE: Grounding Large Language Models in Clinical Guidelines for Decision Support over Longitudinal Cancer Electronic Health Records
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22533