The Patient is not a Moving Document: A World Model Training Paradigm for Longitudinal EHR

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Adam, Irsyad, Chen, Zekai, Laprade, David, Porwal, Shaun, Laub, David, Reinertsen, Erik, Pekis, Arda, Brown, Kevin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Adam, Irsyad
Chen, Zekai
Laprade, David
Porwal, Shaun
Laub, David
Reinertsen, Erik
Pekis, Arda
Brown, Kevin
author_facet Adam, Irsyad
Chen, Zekai
Laprade, David
Porwal, Shaun
Laub, David
Reinertsen, Erik
Pekis, Arda
Brown, Kevin
contents Large language models (LLMs) trained with next-word-prediction have achieved success as clinical foundation models. Representations from these language backbones yield strong linear probe performance across biomedical tasks, suggesting that patient semantics emerge from next-token prediction at scale. However, this paradigm treats patients as a document to be summarized rather than a dynamical system to be simulated; a patient's trajectory emerges from their state evolving under interventions and time, requiring models that simulate dynamics rather than predict tokens. To address this, we introduce SMB-Structure, a world model for structured EHR that grounds a joint-embedding prediction architecture (JEPA) with next-token prediction (SFT). SFT grounds our model to reconstruct future patient states in token space, while JEPA predicts those futures in latent space from the initial patient representation alone, forcing trajectory dynamics to be encoded before the next state is observed. We validate across two large-scale cohorts: Memorial Sloan Kettering (23,319 oncology patients; 323,000+ patient-years) and INSPECT (19,402 pulmonary embolism patients). Using a linear probe evaluated at multiple points along the disease trajectory, we demonstrate that our training paradigm learns embeddings that capture disease dynamics not recoverable by autoregressive baselines, enabling SMB-Structure to achieve competitive performance on complex tasks characterized by high patient heterogeneity. Model weights are available at https://huggingface.co/standardmodelbio/SMB-v1-1.7B-Structure.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_22128
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Patient is not a Moving Document: A World Model Training Paradigm for Longitudinal EHR
Adam, Irsyad
Chen, Zekai
Laprade, David
Porwal, Shaun
Laub, David
Reinertsen, Erik
Pekis, Arda
Brown, Kevin
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Quantitative Methods
Large language models (LLMs) trained with next-word-prediction have achieved success as clinical foundation models. Representations from these language backbones yield strong linear probe performance across biomedical tasks, suggesting that patient semantics emerge from next-token prediction at scale. However, this paradigm treats patients as a document to be summarized rather than a dynamical system to be simulated; a patient's trajectory emerges from their state evolving under interventions and time, requiring models that simulate dynamics rather than predict tokens. To address this, we introduce SMB-Structure, a world model for structured EHR that grounds a joint-embedding prediction architecture (JEPA) with next-token prediction (SFT). SFT grounds our model to reconstruct future patient states in token space, while JEPA predicts those futures in latent space from the initial patient representation alone, forcing trajectory dynamics to be encoded before the next state is observed. We validate across two large-scale cohorts: Memorial Sloan Kettering (23,319 oncology patients; 323,000+ patient-years) and INSPECT (19,402 pulmonary embolism patients). Using a linear probe evaluated at multiple points along the disease trajectory, we demonstrate that our training paradigm learns embeddings that capture disease dynamics not recoverable by autoregressive baselines, enabling SMB-Structure to achieve competitive performance on complex tasks characterized by high patient heterogeneity. Model weights are available at https://huggingface.co/standardmodelbio/SMB-v1-1.7B-Structure.
title The Patient is not a Moving Document: A World Model Training Paradigm for Longitudinal EHR
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Quantitative Methods
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22128