Leveraging Group Relative Policy Optimization to Advance Large Language Models in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Xie, Jiacheng, Zeng, Shuai, Yu, Yang, Tang, Xiaoting, An, Guanghui, Xu, Dong
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866912660011876352
author Xie, Jiacheng
Zeng, Shuai
Yu, Yang
Tang, Xiaoting
An, Guanghui
Xu, Dong
author_facet Xie, Jiacheng
Zeng, Shuai
Yu, Yang
Tang, Xiaoting
An, Guanghui
Xu, Dong
contents Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) presents a rich and structurally unique knowledge system that challenges conventional applications of large language models (LLMs). Although previous TCM-specific LLMs have shown progress through supervised fine-tuning, they often face limitations in alignment, data quality, and evaluation consistency. In this study, we introduce Ladder-base, the first TCM-focused LLM trained with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), a reinforcement learning method that improves reasoning and factual consistency by optimizing response selection based on intra-group comparisons. Ladder-base is built upon the Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct foundation model and trained exclusively on the textual subset of the TCM-Ladder benchmark, using 80 percent of the data for training and the remaining 20 percent split evenly between validation and test sets. Through standardized evaluation, Ladder-base demonstrates superior performance across multiple reasoning metrics when compared to both state-of-the-art general-purpose LLMs such as GPT-4, Gemini 2.5, Claude 3, and Qwen3 and domain-specific TCM models including BenTsao, HuatuoGPT2, and Zhongjing. These findings suggest that GRPO provides an effective and efficient strategy for aligning LLMs with expert-level reasoning in traditional medical domains and supports the development of trustworthy and clinically grounded TCM artificial intelligence systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_17402
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Leveraging Group Relative Policy Optimization to Advance Large Language Models in Traditional Chinese Medicine
Xie, Jiacheng
Zeng, Shuai
Yu, Yang
Tang, Xiaoting
An, Guanghui
Xu, Dong
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) presents a rich and structurally unique knowledge system that challenges conventional applications of large language models (LLMs). Although previous TCM-specific LLMs have shown progress through supervised fine-tuning, they often face limitations in alignment, data quality, and evaluation consistency. In this study, we introduce Ladder-base, the first TCM-focused LLM trained with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), a reinforcement learning method that improves reasoning and factual consistency by optimizing response selection based on intra-group comparisons. Ladder-base is built upon the Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct foundation model and trained exclusively on the textual subset of the TCM-Ladder benchmark, using 80 percent of the data for training and the remaining 20 percent split evenly between validation and test sets. Through standardized evaluation, Ladder-base demonstrates superior performance across multiple reasoning metrics when compared to both state-of-the-art general-purpose LLMs such as GPT-4, Gemini 2.5, Claude 3, and Qwen3 and domain-specific TCM models including BenTsao, HuatuoGPT2, and Zhongjing. These findings suggest that GRPO provides an effective and efficient strategy for aligning LLMs with expert-level reasoning in traditional medical domains and supports the development of trustworthy and clinically grounded TCM artificial intelligence systems.
title Leveraging Group Relative Policy Optimization to Advance Large Language Models in Traditional Chinese Medicine
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17402