AI Consilium: a Benchmark of LLM Clinical Multidisciplinary Second Opinions

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) can generate differential diagnoses for complex cases, but a useful second opinion must also be factually grounded, clinically coherent, actionable, and safe. We developed a multidimensional benchmark using 300 diagnostically resolved NEJM--MedQA cases: 110 for physician reference ratings and Judge calibration and 190 for held-out evaluation. Eight single-model pipelines generated independent role-specific opinions and interactive-consilium reports under free-form and structured clinical-reasoning conditions. A physician-calibrated LLM Judge evaluated 3,040 final reports and the corresponding structured primary-role outputs. Model identity separated report quality more strongly than response format. Structured final reports had higher overall mean scores in seven of eight model pipelines, with their clearest advantage in management (2.740 vs. 2.436). Compared with the structured pre-consilium primary-role opinion, the complete structured synthesis had higher pooled scores across all five shared criteria, with the largest increases in problem prioritization, factual grounding, and reasoning coherence. GPT-5.6-Sol led every evaluated component and reached consensus in the fewest review rounds. These findings show that the benchmark can distinguish model capability, the contribution of multidisciplinary synthesis, criterion-specific effects of response structure, deliberation dynamics, and inference requirements within one common-case evaluation.