# ColaCare: Enhancing Electronic Health Record Modeling through Large Language Model-Driven Multi-Agent Collaboration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02551 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02551/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical and scientific domain agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 26 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Medical and scientific domain agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/medical-and-scientific-domain-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Large Language Models Encode Clinical Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13138/) (2022)
- [DeepSeek-V2: A Strong, Economical, and Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04434/) (2024)
- [Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19118/) (2023)
- [RETAIN: An Interpretable Predictive Model for Healthcare using Reverse Time Attention Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05745/) (2016)
- [MedAgents: Large Language Models as Collaborators for Zero-shot Medical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10537/) (2023)
- [ReConcile: Round-Table Conference Improves Reasoning via Consensus among Diverse LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13007/) (2023)
- [Adapted Large Language Models Can Outperform Medical Experts in Clinical Text Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07430/) (2023)
- [Multi-Time Attention Networks for Irregularly Sampled Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10318/) (2021)
- [Agent Hospital: A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02957/) (2024)
- [MedCPT: Contrastive Pre-trained Transformers with Large-scale PubMed Search Logs for Zero-shot Biomedical Information Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00589/) (2023)
- [GRAM: Graph-based Attention Model for Healthcare Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07012/) (2016)
- [AI Hospital: Benchmarking Large Language Models in a Multi-agent Medical Interaction Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09742/) (2024)
- [M3Care: Learning with Missing Modalities in Multimodal Healthcare Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.17292/) (2022)
- [GraphCare: Enhancing Healthcare Predictions with Personalized Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12788/) (2023)
- [A Closer Look at AUROC and AUPRC under Class Imbalance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06091/) (2024)
- [ConCare: Personalized Clinical Feature Embedding via Capturing the Healthcare Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.12216/) (2019)
- [AdaCare: Explainable Clinical Health Status Representation Learning via Scale-Adaptive Feature Extraction and Recalibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.12205/) (2019)
- [A Comprehensive Benchmark for COVID-19 Predictive Modeling Using Electronic Health Records in Intensive Care](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07805/) (2022)
- [Me LLaMA: Foundation Large Language Models for Medical Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12749/) (2024)
- [PRISM: Mitigating EHR Data Sparsity via Learning from Missing Feature Calibrated Prototype Patient Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04160/) (2023)
- [ClinicRealm: Re-evaluating Large Language Models with Conventional Machine Learning for Non-Generative Clinical Prediction Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18525/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [From Language to Action: A Review of Large Language Models as Autonomous Agents and Tool Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17281/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Reasoning and Agentic Systems in Time Series with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11575/) (2025)
- [HealthFlow: A Self-Evolving AI Agent with Meta Planning for Autonomous Healthcare Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02621/) (2025)
- [Multi-level Value Alignment in Agentic AI Systems: Survey and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09656/) (2025)
- [Multi-Agent Collaboration in Incident Response with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00652/) (2024)
- [ClinicalAgents: Multi-Agent Orchestration for Clinical Decision Making with Dual-Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26182/) (2026)
- [AutoBnB-RAG: Enhancing Multi-Agent Incident Response with Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13118/) (2025)
- [LLM-Driven Collaborative Model for Untangling Commits via Explicit and Implicit Dependency Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16395/) (2025)
- [ConfAgents: A Conformal-Guided Multi-Agent Framework for Cost-Efficient Medical Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04915/) (2025)
- [MedCoG: Maximizing LLM Inference Density in Medical Reasoning via Meta-Cognitive Regulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07905/) (2026)
- [The Path to Self-Evolving Clinical Systems: Scaling Medical Agents from Assistance to Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.11175/) (2026)
- [Grounded by Experience: Generative Healthcare Prediction Augmented with Hierarchical Agentic Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13293/) (2025)
- [Agentic AI in Healthcare & Medicine: A Seven-Dimensional Taxonomy for Empirical Evaluation of LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04813/) (2026)
- [Lessons Learned from Evaluation of LLM based Multi-agents in Safer Therapy Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10911/) (2025)
- [Expertise-aware Multi-LLM Recruitment and Collaboration for Medical Decision-Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13754/) (2025)
- [DiscoVerse: Multi-Agent Pharmaceutical Co-Scientist for Traceable Drug Discovery and Reverse Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18259/) (2025)
- [MedCoRAG: Interpretable Hepatology Diagnosis via Hybrid Evidence Retrieval and Multispecialty Consensus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.05129/) (2026)
- [From Exposure to Internalization: Dual-Stream Calibration for In-context Clinical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06262/) (2026)
- [TSAssistant: A Human-in-the-Loop Agentic Framework for Automated Target Safety Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23938/) (2026)
- [Trajectory-Aware Clinical Risk Prediction via Severity-Grounded Knowledge Graphs and Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.18270/) (2026)
- [Patients-like-me: A Variational LM--GNN Framework for Explainable Clinical Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04193/) (2026)
- [Role-Specialized Mixture-of-Agents with Open-Weight LLMs for Clinical Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22176/) (2026)
- [ViSTA: A Simple Bridge Extends Visual Alignment to Clinical Time-Series Understanding in Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31448/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce ColaCare, a framework that enhances Electronic Health Record (EHR) modeling through multi-agent collaboration driven by Large Language Models (LLMs). Our approach seamlessly integrates domain-specific expert models with LLMs to bridge the gap between structured EHR data and text-based reasoning. Inspired by the Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) approach used in clinical settings, ColaCare employs two types of agents: DoctorAgents and a MetaAgent, which collaboratively analyze patient data. Expert models process and generate predictions from numerical EHR data, while LLM agents produce reasoning references and decision-making reports within the MDT-driven collaborative consultation framework. The MetaAgent orchestrates the discussion, facilitating consultations and evidence-based debates among DoctorAgents, simulating diverse expertise in clinical decision-making. We additionally incorporate the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy (MSD) medical guideline within a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) module for medical evidence support, addressing the challenge of knowledge currency. Extensive experiments conducted on three EHR datasets demonstrate ColaCare's superior performance in clinical mortality outcome and readmission prediction tasks, underscoring its potential to revolutionize clinical decision support systems and advance personalized precision medicine. All code, case studies and a questionnaire are available at the project website: https://colacare.netlify.app.