News

Research shows that AI diagnostic tools outperform doctors

08 May 2026

The latest SA research into AI in healthcare, led byProf Bruce Bassett of AI at Wits University, revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) now surpasses human doctors in hospital ward diagnoses. – Business Day (7 May 2026)
The study at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital suggests that AI Diagnostic Tools could soon become essential for reducing the workloads of overstretched healthcare staff.
“While free chatbots often provide unreliable health advice, these commercially available systems proved remarkably dependable.”
In the study expert doctors were asked to scrutinise 300 sets of in-patient files containing complex data including X-rays, MRI scans, laboratory results and vital signs like blood pressure.
According to the results OpenAI’s GPT-5.1 achieved the highest scores and Claude 4.1 Opus performed the weakest among the machines.
“Every model tested consistently outdid the ward diagnoses made by the hospital staff.”A recent US study, published in the journal Science, confirmed the SA findings.

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