mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Quark Medical Alignment: A Holistic Multi-Dimensional Alignment and Collaborative Optimization Paradigm

arXiv 2602.11661 ↗First posted 12 Feb 2026cs.AIcited by 2

On the map: LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation → Medical LLM alignment

Abstract (arXiv)

While reinforcement learning for large language model alignment has progressed rapidly in recent years, transferring these paradigms to high-stakes medical question answering reveals a fundamental paradigm mismatch. Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback relies on preference annotations that are prohibitively expensive and often fail to reflect the absolute correctness of medical facts. Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards lacks effective automatic verifiers and struggles to handle complex clinical contexts. Meanwhile, medical alignment requires the simultaneous optimization of correctness, safety, and compliance, yet multi-objective heterogeneous reward signals are prone to scale mismatch and optimization conflicts. To address these challenges, we propose a robust medical alignment paradigm. We first construct a holistic multi-dimensional medical alignment matrix that decomposes alignment objectives into four categories: fundamental capabilities, expert knowledge, online feedback, and format specifications. Within each category, we establish a closed loop of where observable metrics inform attributable diagnosis, which in turn drives optimizable rewards, thereby providing fine-grained, high-resolution supervision signals for subsequent iterative optimization. To resolve gradient domination and optimization instability problem caused by heterogeneous signals, we further propose a unified optimization mechanism. This mechanism employs Reference-Frozen Normalization to align reward scales and implements a Tri-Factor Adaptive Dynamic Weighting strategy to achieve collaborative optimization that is weakness-oriented, risk-prioritized, and redundancy-reducing. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed paradigm in real-world medical scenario evaluations, establishing a new paradigm for complex alignment in vertical domains.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical LLM alignment, one of 10 directions in LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation. Builds on 41 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Feb 2026.

Builds on

41 of 47 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Multidimensional Rubric-oriented Reward Model Learning via Geometric Projection Reference Constraints20 Nov
  2. 2025Med-PRM: Medical Reasoning Models with Stepwise, Guideline-verified Process Rewards13 Jun

Other references · 39

  1. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  3. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  4. 2022Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 3,634
  5. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,598
  6. 2022Large Language Models Encode Clinical Knowledgecited by 1,807
  7. 2025Group Sequence Policy Optimizationcited by 788
  8. 2025Beyond the 80/20 Rule: High-Entropy Minority Tokens Drive Effective Reinforcement Learning for LLM Reasoningcited by 540
  9. 2024Generative Verifiers: Reward Modeling as Next-Token Predictioncited by 465
  10. 2025Rubrics as Rewards: Reinforcement Learning Beyond Verifiable Domainscited by 328
  11. 2024From r to Q^*: Your Language Model is Secretly a Q-Functioncited by 242
  12. 2025Inference-Time Scaling for Generalist Reward Modelingcited by 233
27 more
  1. 2023Mitigating the Alignment Tax of RLHFcited by 181
  2. 2025RM-R1: Reward Modeling as Reasoningcited by 149
  3. 2025OpenRubrics: Towards Scalable Synthetic Rubric Generation for Reward Modeling and LLM Alignmentcited by 118
  4. 2025Reinforcement Learning with Rubric Anchorscited by 108
  5. 2025Baichuan-M2: Scaling Medical Capability with Large Verifier Systemcited by 55
  6. 2025Agentic Reward Modeling: Integrating Human Preferences with Verifiable Correctness Signals for Reliable Reward Systemscited by 49
  7. 2025Chasing the Tail: Effective Rubric-based Reward Modeling for Large Language Model Post-Trainingcited by 46
  8. 2025AdvancedIF: Rubric-Based Benchmarking and Reinforcement Learning for Advancing LLM Instruction Followingcited by 46
  9. 2025Online Rubrics Elicitation from Pairwise Comparisonscited by 41
  10. 2025MedCaseReasoning: Evaluating and learning diagnostic reasoning from clinical case reportscited by 34
  11. 2025Generalist Reward Models: Found Inside Large Language Modelscited by 34
  12. 2025LLMEval-Med: A Real-world Clinical Benchmark for Medical LLMs with Physician Validationcited by 29
  13. 2025Optimizing Safe and Aligned Language Generation: A Multi-Objective GRPO Approachcited by 24
  14. 2025Learning to Optimize Multi-Objective Alignment Through Dynamic Reward Weightingcited by 23
  15. 2025Training AI Co-Scientists Using Rubric Rewardscited by 23
  16. 2025Inverse Reinforcement Learning with Dynamic Reward Scaling for LLM Alignmentcited by 20
  17. 2025User Feedback in Human-LLM Dialogues: A Lens to Understand Users But Noisy as a Learning Signalcited by 19
  18. 2025Disentangling Reasoning and Knowledge in Medical Large Language Modelscited by 17
  19. 2025Towards Improving Reward Design in RL: A Reward Alignment Metric for RL Practitionerscited by 10
  20. 2025Reinforcement Learning from User Feedbackcited by 8
  21. 2024LASeR: Learning to Adaptively Select Reward Models with Multi-Armed Banditscited by 7
  22. 2025QuarkMed Medical Foundation Model Technical Reportcited by 5
  23. 2025MR-FlowDPO: Multi-Reward Direct Preference Optimization for Flow-Matching Text-to-Music Generationcited by 5
  24. 2025ENCORE: Entropy-guided Reward Composition for Multi-head Safety Reward Modelscited by 4
  25. 2025Souper-Model: How Simple Arithmetic Unlocks State-of-the-Art LLM Performancecited by 4
  26. 2025Utility-inspired Reward Transformations Improve Reinforcement Learning Training of Language Modelscited by 2
  27. 2025Multi-Agent Collaborative Reward Design for Enhancing Reasoning in Reinforcement Learningcited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026ProMedical: Hierarchical Fine-Grained Criteria Modeling for Medical LLM Alignment via Explicit Injection
  2. 2026MAPLE: Elevating Medical Reasoning from Statistical Consensus to Process-Led Alignment
  3. 2025Toward Effective Reinforcement Learning Fine-Tuning for Medical VQA in Vision-Language Models
  4. 2026ConRub-Med: Reinforcement Learning with Consensus Rubrics for Open-Ended Medical Question Answering
  5. 2024MedCare: Advancing Medical LLMs through Decoupling Clinical Alignment and Knowledge Aggregation
  6. 2026ClinAlign: Scaling Healthcare Alignment from Clinician Preference
  7. 2026CARE: Causally-Aligned Reasoning Exploration for Medical Large Language Models
  8. 2025CheXPO-v2: Preference Optimization for Chest X-ray VLMs with Knowledge Graph Consistency