Credit: PhotoGranary02 via Shutterstock.com OpenEvidence, an AI tool used by American doctors, is now being offered in countries with limited access to medical literature. Reuters reported that the company is working with Anthropic to give clinicians in low- and middle-income countries free access to a specialized version of its platform. The initiative is being introduced in around 100 countries, including Uganda, Angola, Sudan, Haiti, and Mongolia, according to OpenEvidence, which provided the information to Reuters. The financial terms were not disclosed by either company.
OpenEvidence answers doctors’ clinical questions using peer-reviewed research and treatment guidelines. It is currently free for clinicians in the United States and Europe. The companies say Anthropic provides the backend technology, while OpenEvidence adapts the system for each region’s healthcare needs. Founder Daniel Nadler told Reuters that US clinicians used the platform 42 million times in August.
This year, OpenEvidence stated that it has been working with health organizations in Rwanda and Botswana to modify its tools for situations in which disease patterns. The resources available for diagnosis and the treatments on offer are very different from those found in richer countries; the project in Rwanda, carried out in partnership with the Rwanda Biomedical Center and Resolve to Save Lives, involved 45 local doctors and nurses who tested the tool and provided feedback on any necessary changes. “One hundred percent of what we are developing for these areas is designed to be context adaptive,” Nadler told Reuters. Critics of medical AI warn that systems trained mainly on data from high-income countries may not reflect how medicine is practiced elsewhere. In response, Nadler points out that even in places where clinics do not always have electricity, most doctors still have smartphones.
Daniela Amodei, president of Anthropic, said the project is something the market could not achieve on its own. In her interview with Reuters, she explained that while the technology is now advanced enough, “market incentives by themselves would not cause it to happen” without some philanthropic effort. Also, we reported this week that Anthropic has built a laboratory for physical biology as it expands into drug science. For clinicians using the tool, the main issue is access, not AI itself.
Dr Ahmed Bendary, a cardiologist at Benha University in Egypt, told Reuters that expanding the tool beyond the United States and Europe is especially important in places where access to major journals is limited. The key question now is whether a tool built mostly on evidence from wealthy countries can be adapted for use in places like Mongolia and Sudan, one country at a time.
