README.md

---
language:
- en
license: mit
pretty_name: "BenchBase: MedMCQA"
tags:
- medical
- question-answering
- multiple-choice
- benchmark
- clinical-knowledge
- medical-education
- benchbase
task_categories:
- question-answering
- multiple-choice
size_categories:
- 100K<n<1M
---

<h1 align="center">BenchBase: MedMCQA</h1>

<h3 align="center">193,000+ multiple-choice medical questions from Indian postgraduate medical entrance exams, spanning 2,400 healthcare topics.</h3>

<p align="center">
  <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/Layered-Labs/benchbase-medmcqa">
    <img src="https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/badges/resolve/main/dataset-on-hf-md.svg" alt="Dataset on HuggingFace"/>
  </a>
  &nbsp;
  <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg" alt="License"/>
</p>

<p align="center">
  <img src="https://huggingface.co/datasets/Layered-Labs/benchbase-medmcqa/resolve/main/banner.svg" alt="BenchBase: MedMCQA" width="100%"/>
</p>

---

## Overview

BenchBase: MedMCQA is a repackaging of the MedMCQA dataset for the Layered Labs BenchBase
benchmark suite. The source dataset contains 193,155 multiple-choice questions drawn from
AIIMS and PGMR medical entrance examinations, covering 2,400+ healthcare topics across
clinical medicine, pharmacology, pathology, anatomy, biochemistry, and more. Each question
includes four answer options, a correct answer label, subject and topic annotations, and
optional expert explanations. The train split (182,822 questions) includes correct answer
labels; the test split (6,150 questions) withholds them for evaluation. This repackaging
standardizes column names and encoding to match the BenchBase schema.


---

## Statement of Need

Evaluating medical language models requires standardized, clinically relevant benchmarks.
MedMCQA is one of the largest and most topic-diverse medical QA datasets available, but
the original release uses inconsistent column names and encoding that complicate integration
into multi-benchmark evaluation pipelines. This BenchBase repackaging normalizes the schema,
documents all fields explicitly, and makes the dataset drop-in compatible with other BenchBase
medical benchmarks for unified evaluation.


---

## Intended Use

This dataset is intended for researchers and engineers evaluating or fine-tuning language
models on medical question answering. It is appropriate for benchmarking general medical
knowledge, subject-specific clinical reasoning, and model calibration across 2,400+ topics.
It is not intended as a clinical decision support tool or as a substitute for professional
medical judgment.


---

## Limitations

Questions are drawn from Indian postgraduate medical entrance exams and may reflect regional
clinical guidelines, drug names, and diagnostic conventions that differ from US or European
practice. The test split withholds correct answer labels, so evaluation requires submission
to the original leaderboard for held-out accuracy. Expert explanations are available for only
a subset of training questions. Some questions have ambiguous or disputed correct answers
as noted in the research literature.


---

## Dataset Structure

### Splits

| Split | Rows |
|-------|------|
| train | 182,822 |
| validation | 4,183 |
| test | 6,150 |

### Features

| Column | Type | Description |
|--------|------|-------------|
| `id` | `string` | Unique question identifier. |
| `question` | `string` | The medical question text. |
| `opa` | `string` | Answer option A. |
| `opb` | `string` | Answer option B. |
| `opc` | `string` | Answer option C. |
| `opd` | `string` | Answer option D. |
| `answer` | `int8` | Index of the correct option (0=A, 1=B, 2=C, 3=D). Null in test split. |
| `explanation` | `string` | Expert explanation for the correct answer, where available. |
| `subject` | `string` | Medical subject area (e.g., Pharmacology, Anatomy). |
| `topic` | `string` | Specific topic within the subject. |
| `choice_type` | `string` | Whether the question is single-answer or multi-answer. |

---

## Usage

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("Layered-Labs/benchbase-medmcqa")
print(ds)
```

### Example

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("Layered-Labs/benchbase-medmcqa")

# Inspect the training split
train = ds["train"]
print(train[0])

# Filter to pharmacology questions
pharma = train.filter(lambda x: x["subject"] == "Pharmacology")
print(f"Pharmacology questions: {len(pharma)}")

```

---

## Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

```bibtex
@dataset{layeredlabs_benchbase_medmcqa,
  title     = {BenchBase: MedMCQA},
  author    = {Ridwan, Abdullah and Hossain, Radhyyah},
  year      = {2025},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url       = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/Layered-Labs/benchbase-medmcqa}
}
```

---

## License

Released under the [MIT License](LICENSE).
Maintained by [Layered Labs](https://layeredlabs.ai).