A Harvard study has found that AI systems outperformed human doctors in emergency room diagnosis, achieving higher accuracy in identifying patient conditions. The findings suggest AI could play a growing role in clinical decision-making, though experts stress it should support human doctors instead of replacing them

A recent study by Harvard Medical School has found that artificial intelligence systems can outperform human doctors in emergency room diagnosis tasks, The Guardian reported.

The report highlights rapid advances in clinical AI capabilities. The research showed that AI models were able to identify the exact or near-correct diagnosis in about 67 percent of emergency cases, compared to 50–55 percent accuracy among human doctors.

The study evaluated AI performance using real-world emergency department cases, where both the AI and doctors were given the same patient records, including vital signs and clinical notes.

Researchers said the results indicate that AI is increasingly capable of supporting clinical reasoning, particularly in high-pressure environments such as emergency care.