Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42410244›Full record

ArticleNPJ digital medicine2026

Large language models are powerful electronic health record encoders.

Stefan Hegselmann, Georg von Arnim, Tillmann Rheude, Noel Kronenberg, David Sontag, Gerhard Hindricks, Roland Eils, Benjamin Wild

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Stefan Hegselmann *Berlin Institute of Health at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Center of Digital Health, Berlin, Germany. stefan.hegselmann@charite.de.
Georg von Arnim *Berlin Institute of Health at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Center of Digital Health, Berlin, Germany.
Tillmann RheudeBerlin Institute of Health at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Center of Digital Health, Berlin, Germany.
Noel KronenbergBerlin Institute of Health at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Center of Digital Health, Berlin, Germany.
David SontagComputer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA.
Gerhard HindricksDeutsches Herzzentrum der Charité (DHZC) - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Roland EilsBerlin Institute of Health at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Center of Digital Health, Berlin, Germany.
Benjamin WildBerlin Institute of Health at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Center of Digital Health, Berlin, Germany.

Funding

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung 01ZZ2317GDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 437531118
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Electronic health records (EHRs) offer considerable potential for clinical prediction, but their complexity and heterogeneity challenge traditional machine learning. Domain-specific electronic health record foundation models trained on unlabeled EHR data have shown improved predictive accuracy and generalization. However, their development is constrained by limited data access and site-specific vocabularies. We convert EHR data into plain text by replacing medical codes with natural-language descriptions, enabling general-purpose large language models (LLMs) to produce high-dimensional embeddings for downstream prediction tasks without access to private medical training data. LLM-based embeddings perform on par with a specialized EHR foundation model, CLMBR-T-Base, across 15 clinical tasks from the EHRSHOT benchmark. In an external validation using the UK Biobank, an LLM-based model shows statistically significant improvements for some tasks, which we attribute to higher vocabulary coverage and slightly better generalization. Overall, we reveal a trade-off between the computational efficiency of specialized EHR models and the portability and data independence of LLM-based embeddings.

Identifiers

PMID42410244
PMCPMC13356027

What Socratic holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.