Doximity is setting out to prove that it’s more than “LinkedIn for doctors” after snapping up clinical reference AI startup Pathway for $63M.
Clinical workflows are the new social media… or at least that’s the plot of Doximity’s growth story.
- Act 1: Doximity’s newsfeed and networking features set the stage for pharma advertising by attracting physicians to the platform.
- Act 2: Complementary workflow tools like scheduling, telehealth, and Doximity Dialer gave physicians a reason to stick around longer than their news sweep.
- Act 3: The AI suite took engagement a step further with Doximity GPT and Doximity Scribe, which helped drive quarterly active users to a record 1M physicians in Q1.
Enter Pathway. The Montreal-based startup’s AI helps physicians answer questions at the bedside using information from Pathway Corpus, “one of the largest structured datasets in medicine” that spans nearly every guideline, journal, and landmark trial.
- Pathway’s cross-linked structure reportedly allows it to understand complex drug interactions and score the strength of medical evidence, such as weighing validated clinical trials more than case studies.
- The acquisition will bring that same “robustness” to the back-end of Doximity GPT, and the integration is already live for thousands of physician beta testers.
If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em. It’s tough for physicians to see your pharma ads if they’re not using your platform, so Doximity is acquiring its own workflow solutions to keep users from venturing off to use competing products from OpenEvidence or Wolters Kluwer.
- Clinicians have also apparently been using Doximity GPT outside of office hours more than Doximity’s other tools, which helps with serving ads around the clock.
- Doximity’s AI suite and workflow modules already account for over 20% of its ad revenue, and it now expects that share to overtake its newsfeed in the next few years.
The Takeaway
Doximity is looking to make AI the star of its next act, and if OpenEvidence doesn’t want to share its script, then Pathway will have to steal the show.
