VerifAI: A Verifiable Open-Source Search Engine for Biomedical Question Answering

Computer Science > Information Retrieval [Submitted on 16 Jan 2026] VerifAI: A Verifiable Open-Source Search Engine for Biomedical Question Answering Miloš Košprdić, Adela Ljajić, Bojana Bašaragin, Darija Medvecki, Lorenzo Cassano, Nikola Milošević We introduce VerifAI, an open-source expert system for biomedical question answering that integrates retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with a novel post-hoc claim verification mechanism. Unlike standard RAG systems, VerifAI ensures factual consistency by decomposing generated answers into atomic claims and validating them against retrieved evidence using a fine-tuned natural language inference (NLI) engine. The system comprises three modular components: (1) a hybrid Information Retrieval (IR) module optimized for biomedical queries (MAP@10 of 42.7%), (2) a citation-aware Generative Component fine-tuned on a custom dataset to produce referenced answers, and (3) a Verification Component that detects hallucinations with state-of-the-art accuracy, outperforming GPT-4 on the HealthVer benchmark. Evaluations demonstrate that VerifAI significantly reduces hallucinated citations compared to zero-shot baselines and provides a transparent, verifiable lineage for every claim. The full pipeline, including code, models, and datasets, is open-sourced to facilitate reliable AI deployment in high-stakes domains. Subjects: Information Retrieval (cs.IR); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL) Cite as: arXiv:2604.08549 [cs.IR]   (or arXiv:2604.08549v1 [cs.IR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.08549 Focus to learn more Journal reference: Sumitted to IEEE Access,2026 Submission history From: Nikola Milošević Dr [view email] [v1] Fri, 16 Jan 2026 09:08:17 UTC (2,978 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.IR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cs cs.AI cs.CL References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)