# BianCang: A Traditional Chinese Medicine Large Language Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11027 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11027/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)
- [Qwen2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10671/) (2024)
- [ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12793/) (2024)
- [LIMA: Less Is More for Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11206/) (2023)
- [GLM: General Language Model Pretraining with Autoregressive Blank Infilling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10360/) (2021)
- [WizardCoder: Empowering Code Large Language Models with Evol-Instruct](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08568/) (2023)
- [Baichuan 2: Open Large-scale Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10305/) (2023)
- [Textbooks Are All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11644/) (2023)
- [SWIFT:A Scalable lightWeight Infrastructure for Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05517/) (2024)
- [Efficient and Effective Text Encoding for Chinese LLaMA and Alpaca](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08177/) (2023)
- [How Abilities in Large Language Models are Affected by Supervised Fine-tuning Data Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05492/) (2023)
- [HuatuoGPT, towards Taming Language Model to Be a Doctor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15075/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models for Healthcare: from Data, Technology, and Applications to Accountability and Ethics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05694/) (2023)
- [HuaTuo: Tuning LLaMA Model with Chinese Medical Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06975/) (2023)
- [DoctorGLM: Fine-tuning your Chinese Doctor is not a Herculean Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01097/) (2023)
- [DISC-LawLLM: Fine-tuning Large Language Models for Intelligent Legal Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11325/) (2023)
- [Zhongjing: Enhancing the Chinese Medical Capabilities of Large Language Model through Expert Feedback and Real-world Multi-turn Dialogue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03549/) (2023)
- [LawBench: Benchmarking Legal Knowledge of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16289/) (2023)
- [CMB: A Comprehensive Medical Benchmark in Chinese](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08833/) (2023)
- [HuatuoGPT-II, One-stage Training for Medical Adaption of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09774/) (2023)
- [DISC-MedLLM: Bridging General Large Language Models and Real-World Medical Consultation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14346/) (2023)
- [Fengshenbang 1.0: Being the Foundation of Chinese Cognitive Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02970/) (2022)
- [BianQue: Balancing the Questioning and Suggestion Ability of Health LLMs with Multi-turn Health Conversations Polished by ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15896/) (2023)
- [DISC-FinLLM: A Chinese Financial Large Language Model based on Multiple Experts Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15205/) (2023)
- [Ape210K: A Large-Scale and Template-Rich Dataset of Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11506/) (2020)
- [COIG-CQIA: Quality is All You Need for Chinese Instruction Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18058/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [OpenTCM: A GraphRAG-Empowered LLM-based System for Traditional Chinese Medicine Knowledge Retrieval and Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20118/) (2025)
- [BenCao: An Instruction-Tuned Large Language Model for Traditional Chinese Medicine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17415/) (2025)
- [Do "New Snow Tablets" Contain Snow? Large Language Models Over-Rely on Names to Identify Ingredients of Chinese Drugs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03786/) (2025)
- [LingLanMiDian: Systematic Evaluation of LLMs on TCM Knowledge and Clinical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01779/) (2026)
- [RACE-Align: Retrieval-Augmented and Chain-of-Thought Enhanced Preference Alignment for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02726/) (2025)
- [A benchmark dataset for evaluating Syndrome Differentiation and Treatment in large language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02816/) (2025)
- [DongYuan: An LLM-Based Framework for Integrative Chinese and Western Medicine Spleen-Stomach Disorders Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28191/) (2026)
- [TCMIIES: A Browser-Based LLM-Powered Intelligent Information Extraction System for Academic Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07507/) (2026)
- [MMIR-TCM: Memory-Integrated Multimodal Inference and Retrieval for TCM Clinical Decision Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01814/) (2026)
- [Large Language Models Versus Physicians in Traditional Chinese Medicine: A Real-World Clinical Case Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.17544/) (2026)
- [LingLan: An Advancing Traditional Chinese Medicine Diagnosis LLM with Multimodal Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25715/) (2026)
- [Output Discipline Sets the Floor: A Falsification-Guided, Model-Agnostic Agent Protocol for Auditable Hypothesis-Driven Decision Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18298/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The surge of large language models (LLMs) has driven significant progress in medical applications, including traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, current medical LLMs struggle with TCM diagnosis and syndrome differentiation due to substantial differences between TCM and modern medical theory, and the scarcity of specialized, high-quality corpora. To this end, in this paper we propose BianCang, a TCM-specific LLM, using a two-stage training process that first injects domain-specific knowledge and then aligns it through targeted stimulation to enhance diagnostic and differentiation capabilities. Specifically, we constructed pre-training corpora, instruction-aligned datasets based on real hospital records, and the ChP-TCM dataset derived from the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China. We compiled extensive TCM and medical corpora for continual pre-training and supervised fine-tuning, building a comprehensive dataset to refine the model's understanding of TCM. Evaluations across 11 test sets involving 31 models and 4 tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of BianCang, offering valuable insights for future research. Code, datasets, and models are available on https://github.com/QLU-NLP/BianCang.