Foundation models, first introduced in 2021, refer to large-scale pretrained models (e.g., large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs)) that learn from extensive unlabeled datasets through unsupervised methods, enabling them to excel in diverse downstream tasks. These models, like GPT, can be adapted to various applications such as question answering and visual understanding, outperforming task-specific AI models and earning their name due to broad applicability across fields. The development of biomedical foundation models marks a significant milestone in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to understand complex biological phenomena and advance medical research and practice. This survey explores the potential of foundation models in diverse domains within biomedical fields, including computational biology, drug discovery and development, clinical informatics, medical imaging, and public health. The purpose of this survey is to inspire ongoing research in the application of foundation models to health science.
@article{arxiv.2503.02104,
title = {Foundation Model in Biomedicine},
author = {Xiangrui Liu and Yuanyuan Zhang and Qianyu Shang and Yingzhou Lu and Changchang Yin and Xiaoling Hu and Xiaoou Liu and Lulu Chen and Alexander Rodríguez and Yezhou Yang and Ping Zhang and Jintai Chen and Shan Du and Huaxiu Yao and Sheng Wang and Tianfan Fu and Xiao Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.02104},
year = {2025}
}