用提示词让大模型做糖尿病胰岛素决策,效果媲美专门训练的算法。
Are Large Language Models Dynamic Treatment Planners? An In Silico Study from a Prior Knowledge Injection Angle
- 通过精心设计提示词,让小模型零样本完成胰岛素剂量调整。
- 7B级模型在稳定患者中表现优于或相当传统强化学习模型。
- 但链式思考会引发过度给药,暴露推理缺陷,需谨慎使用。
强化学习构建的动态治疗方案有望自动化复杂临床决策,但部署受限于临床知识注入与患者安全保障的高工程成本。大语言模型(LLMs)提供了新思路:通过自然语言提示隐式嵌入先验知识与临床经验,无需环境特定训练。本研究在模拟1型糖尿病环境中,评估开源LLMs作为零样本胰岛素剂量决策者的表现,并与经过充分训练的小型神经网络强化学习代理(SRAs)对比。结果表明,经优化的零样本提示可使较小的LLM(如Qwen2.5-7B)在稳定患者群体中实现与甚至超越训练好的SRAs的临床性能。然而,当采用链式思考(CoT)提示时,LLMs表现出明显过度给药问题,暴露出算术幻觉、时间误判和临床逻辑不一致等关键失败模式。引入对潜在临床状态(如进餐)的显式推理也仅带来微弱性能提升,说明当前模型仅靠文本推理难以捕捉复杂的隐藏生理动态。研究呼吁在临床流程中谨慎但乐观地整合LLMs,强调针对性提示工程、严格验证及结合语言推理与结构化生理建模的混合方法,以实现安全、稳健且有效的决策支持系统。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reinforcement learning (RL)-based dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) hold promise for automating complex clinical decision-making, yet their practical deployment remains hindered by the intensive engineering required to inject clinical knowledge and ensure patient safety. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) suggest a complementary approach, where implicit prior knowledge and clinical heuristics are naturally embedded through linguistic prompts without requiring environment-specific training. In this study, we rigorously evaluate open-source LLMs as dynamic insulin dosing agents in an in silico Type 1 diabetes simulator, comparing their zero-shot inference performance against small neural network-based RL agents (SRAs) explicitly trained for the task. Our results indicate that carefully designed zero-shot prompts enable smaller LLMs (e.g., Qwen2.5-7B) to achieve comparable or superior clinical performance relative to extensively trained SRAs, particularly in stable patient cohorts. However, LLMs exhibit notable limitations, such as overly aggressive insulin dosing when prompted with chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning, highlighting critical failure modes including arithmetic hallucination, temporal misinterpretation, and inconsistent clinical logic. Incorporating explicit reasoning about latent clinical states (e.g., meals) yielded minimal performance gains, underscoring the current model's limitations in capturing complex, hidden physiological dynamics solely through textual inference. Our findings advocate for cautious yet optimistic integration of LLMs into clinical workflows, emphasising the necessity of targeted prompt engineering, careful validation, and potentially hybrid approaches that combine linguistic reasoning with structured physiological modelling to achieve safe, robust, and clinically effective decision-support systems.
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