HEAD-QA v2: Expanding a Healthcare Benchmark for Reasoning
On the map: LLM reasoning → Clinical and biomedical applications
Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce HEAD-QA v2, an expanded and updated version of a Spanish/English healthcare multiple-choice reasoning dataset originally released by Vilares and G'omez-Rodr'iguez (2019). The update responds to the growing need for high-quality datasets that capture the linguistic and conceptual complexity of healthcare reasoning. We extend the dataset to over 12,000 questions from ten years of Spanish professional exams, benchmark several open-source LLMs using prompting, RAG, and probability-based answer selection, and provide additional multilingual versions to support future work. Results indicate that performance is mainly driven by model scale and intrinsic reasoning ability, with complex inference strategies obtaining limited gains. Together, these results establish HEAD-QA v2 as a reliable resource for advancing research on biomedical reasoning and model improvement.
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Clinical and biomedical applications, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 26 of its 34 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Nov 2025.
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26 of 34 references.
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