Microsoft claims new AI diagnosis tool up to 4 times more accurate than doctors
Microsoft has claimed developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that it said diagnosed complex medical conditions up to four times more accurately than generalist doctors in controlled tests.
Microsoft has claimed developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that it said diagnosed complex medical conditions up to four times more accurately than generalist doctors in controlled tests.
According to a research published in the scientific journal Science Thursday, October 22, 2026, the system, called Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), uses multiple AI agents to analyze symptoms, review medical histories, order tests, and identify diseases.
The tech giant claimed that the system achieved approximately 83% accuracy in complex medical cases, compared with 36% for doctors using reference materials and 22% for those working without them.
Microsoft Diagnostic Orchestrator
Microsoft designed its Diagnostic Orchestrator to function like a team of medical specialists working together to diagnose a patient.
Instead of immediately providing an answer, the system reviews available information, considers possible diagnoses, requests additional tests, and updates its conclusions as new evidence becomes available.
"We developed an interactive benchmark and an artificial intelligence (AI) system that simulates a panel of physicians, continually revising the differential diagnosis and selecting cost-effective tests. Using this benchmark, the system achieved 83.2% accuracy on New England Journal of Medicine clinicopathological conference cases and 80.3% on MIMIC-IV-ED emergency department admissions, outperforming generalist physicians (36.1 and 46.8%, respectively)", Microsoft said.
"Although these findings were obtained in a controlled benchmark setting, they highlight the promise of language models for supporting more accurate, lower-cost diagnoses", the company said.
The system uses OpenAI’s GPT-5 model and coordinates several AI agents that challenge each other’s conclusions before reaching a diagnosis.
Microsoft Sequential Diagnosis Benchmark
Microsoft also developed a testing framework called Sequential Diagnosis Benchmark (SDBench), which evaluates how AI systems and doctors diagnose conditions through multiple steps.
"We introduced the Sequential Diagnosis Benchmark (SDBench), which transforms 304 clinicopathological conference cases from the New England Journal of Medicine (CPC cases) and 325 emergency department–to–admission encounters from MIMIC-IV-ED (ED cases) into interactive, stepwise encounters", the paper said.
"Together, the CPC and ED cases span a broad spectrum of clinical presentations and documentation styles, with final diagnoses ranging from common conditions to rare disorders", it added.
The company plans to make the benchmark available to researchers so they can evaluate other AI systems.
Microsoft plans to begin testing the Diagnostic Orchestrator in real hospital settings through a partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston that could begin within the next couple of months, Microsoft’s AI health lead, Dr. Dominic King, said while talking to The Verge.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said the technology could significantly change healthcare delivery over the coming years.
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