Computer Science > Machine Learning
arXiv:2603.08987 (cs)
[Submitted on 9 Mar 2026]
Title:MAPLE: Elevating Medical Reasoning from Statistical Consensus to Process-Led Alignment
Authors:Kailong Fan, Anqi Pu, Yichen Wu, Wanhua Li, Yicong Li, Hanspeter Pfister, Huafeng Liu, Xiang Li, Quanzheng Li, Ning Guo
View a PDF of the paper titled MAPLE: Elevating Medical Reasoning from Statistical Consensus to Process-Led Alignment, by Kailong Fan and 9 other authors
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Recent advances in medical large language models have explored Test-Time Reinforcement Learning (TTRL) to enhance reasoning. However, standard TTRL often relies on majority voting (MV) as a heuristic supervision signal, which can be unreliable in complex medical scenarios where the most frequent reasoning path is not necessarily the clinically correct one. In this work, we propose a novel and unified training paradigm that integrates medical process reward models with TTRL to bridge the gap between test-time scaling (TTS) and parametric model optimization. Specifically, we advance the TTRL framework by replacing the conventional MV with a fine-grained, expert-aligned supervision paradigm using Med-RPM. This integration ensures that reinforcement learning is guided by medical correctness rather than mere consensus, effectively distilling search-based intelligence into the model's parametric memory. Extensive evaluations on four different benchmarks have demonstrated that our developed method consistently and significantly outperforms current TTRL and standalone PRM selection. Our findings establish that transitioning from stochastic heuristics to structured, step-wise rewards is essential for developing reliable and scalable medical AI systems
| Subjects: | Machine Learning (cs.LG) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2603.08987 [cs.LG] |
| (or arXiv:2603.08987v1 [cs.LG] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.08987
Focus to learn more
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
|
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
- View PDF
- HTML (experimental)
- TeX Source
View a PDF of the paper titled MAPLE: Elevating Medical Reasoning from Statistical Consensus to Process-Led Alignment, by Kailong Fan and 9 other authors
References & Citations
export BibTeX citation
Loading...
Bookmark
Bibliographic Tools
Code, Data, Media
Demos
Related Papers
About arXivLabs
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
Links to Code Toggle
Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv recommender toggle
IArxiv Recommender
(What is IArxiv?)
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
