Performance Comparison of ChatGPT-4 and Japanese Medical Residents in the General Medicine In-Training Examination: Comparison Study

Abstract

Background: The reliability of GPT-4, a state-of-the-art expansive language model specializing in clinical reasoning and medical knowledge, remains largely unverified across non-English languages. Objective: This study aims to compare fundamental clinical competencies between Japanese residents and GPT-4 by using the General Medicine In-Training Examination (GM-ITE). Methods: We used the GPT-4 model provided by OpenAI and the GM-ITE examination questions for the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 to conduct a comparative analysis. This analysis focused on evaluating the performance of individuals who were concluding their second year of residency in comparison to that of GPT-4. Given the current abilities of GPT-4, our study included only single-choice exam questions, excluding those involving audio, video, or image data. The assessment included 4 categories: general theory (professionalism and medical interviewing), symptomatology and clinical reasoning, physical examinations and clinical procedures, and specific diseases. Additionally, we categorized the questions into 7 specialty fields and 3 levels of difficulty, which were determined based on residents’ correct response rates. Results: Upon examination of 137 GM-ITE questions in Japanese, GPT-4 scores were significantly higher than the mean scores of residents (residents: 55.8%, GPT-4: 70.1%; P