LLMs vs. the Chinese Pharmacist Exam: DeepSeek-R1 Comes Out Ahead

Kari Jaaskelainen

26 Nov 2025 — 1 min read

Can AI pass the pharmacist exam? New study says: mostly yes.

Researchers tested two large language models on 2,306 real, text-only questions from China’s national pharmacist licensing exams (2017–2021), entered exactly as written in Chinese.

The results: DeepSeek-R1 hit 90.0% accuracy, clearly ahead of ChatGPT-4o at 76.1% (p < 0.001). DeepSeek held consistent advantages in foundational knowledge and clinical synthesis. Year-by-year differences trended the same way but weren’t statistically significant.

Why this matters: domain-tuned models may better support high-stakes, domain-specific learning—think smarter practice tests, feedback, and curriculum insights. But not a replacement for certified human oversight, especially where legal and ethical risks are high.

Takeaway: AI can be a powerful study partner for pharmacists-in-training, while teachers and regulators keep the guardrails in place.

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20526v1

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20526v1

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#AI #Pharmacy #MedicalEducation #LLM #DeepSeek #ChatGPT #China #Assessment #EdTech #Healthcare

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