Towards Reliable Medical Question Answering: Techniques and Challenges in Mitigating Hallucinations in Language Models
It addresses the critical problem of AI-generated inaccuracies in high-stakes medical domains, but is incremental as it synthesizes existing methods without introducing new solutions.
This paper reviews techniques to reduce hallucinations in language models for medical question answering, highlighting the need for domain-specific adaptations to improve reliability in clinical and biomedical applications.
The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) has significantly impacted various domains, including healthcare and biomedicine. However, the phenomenon of hallucination, where LLMs generate outputs that deviate from factual accuracy or context, poses a critical challenge, especially in high-stakes domains. This paper conducts a scoping study of existing techniques for mitigating hallucinations in knowledge-based task in general and especially for medical domains. Key methods covered in the paper include Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)-based techniques, iterative feedback loops, supervised fine-tuning, and prompt engineering. These techniques, while promising in general contexts, require further adaptation and optimization for the medical domain due to its unique demands for up-to-date, specialized knowledge and strict adherence to medical guidelines. Addressing these challenges is crucial for developing trustworthy AI systems that enhance clinical decision-making and patient safety as well as accuracy of biomedical scientific research.