Tag: openevidence

General-Purpose LLMs Outperform Healthcare-Specific Models

Posted on by Jason Barry

We might have just gotten our spiciest study of the year after new findings in Nature Medicine showed that general-purpose LLMs outperform specialized healthcare models straight out of the box.

It was a battle of the bots. Researchers pitted OpenEvidence and UpToDate Expert AI against three frontier models that anyone with a web browser can pull up in two seconds: GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and Claude Opus 4.6.

The models were tested across three domains:

  • medical knowledge (MedQA)
  • expert clinician alignment (HealthBench)
  • 100 real physician queries (RCQ) scored by 12 blinded clinicians  

It was a clean sweep. The general-purpose LLMs outperformed the specialized models on all three evals, and by a healthy margin. This chart gets the point across.

  • On MedQA, Gemini led the pack with 97.4% accuracy (vs. 89.6% for OE and 88.4% for UTD). Fun fact, the frontier models had a huge advantage here since their training data included these exact questions (and answers).
  • On HealthBench, GPT-5.2 dominated with an 88%. It’s almost like OpenAI invented the benchmark.
  • The RCQs were probably the most clinically meaningful component, and all three frontier models took the podium here as well. It was a bit odd that the researchers didn’t share the specific questions, and OE definitely thought so too.

OpenEvidence hit back hard and fast. It went straight to its socials to let the world know that the study was not only poorly designed and biased, but that the authors had reached out for API access to help build a competing product. Request denied.

  • OE also pointing out the training data contamination issue with MedQA, and critiqued HealthBench for scoring responses based on subjective stylistic choices (in one example OE scored 20% “worse” because it didn’t use a specific email header).
  • The cherry on top was OE revealing that the real-world clinician queries were only added after peer reviewers flagged the study for having weak evidence. Big if true.

Obligatory disclaimer: the models were evaluated back in February, and the performance gap could easily be even wider today. 

The Takeaway

OpenEvidence and UpToDate didn’t become successful by being better AI developers than OpenAI and Anthropic. They did it by doing the things that don’t show up in benchmarks – curating sources of verifiable evidence, wrapping them in an interface that docs actually enjoy using, and earning their trust one question at a time. If anything, this study confirmed that those matter now more than ever.

OpenEvidence Locks in $210M Series B in Second Raise of the Year

Posted on by Jason Barry

OpenEvidence might just be the hottest startup in healthcare after locking in another $210M of Series B funding and tripling its valuation to a whopping $3.5B.

Déjà vu. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because OpenEvidence first joined the unicorn club just five short months ago when it notched a $1B valuation through its $75M Series A.

  • Since then, the LLM-powered medical search engine inked a multi-year content agreement with JAMA to bring full-text articles directly to its platform, and continued to add new doctors at the breakneck pace of 65k per month.
  • It turns out that getting doctors to use a sleek new AI tool isn’t the hardest thing in the world when you make it available at no cost, and over 40% of doctors in the U.S. apparently don’t mind a few pharma ads if you can make their job easier.

Does that justify the valuation? Depends what physician trust is worth. OpenEvidence has added over 430k verified physicians since launching in 2023, and they’re now supporting over 8.5M clinical consultations every month.

  • The volume of medical research published annually is doubling every five years, and physicians are flocking to OpenEvidence so that they can search once, skip the scavenger hunt, and surface the science in seconds.
  • That type of growth is nearly unprecedented in healthcare, and investors are looking to capitalize by dogpiling into startups like OpenEvidence and Abridge, which also raised back-to-back megarounds in the first half of the year.

OpenEvidence is only ramping up from here. CEO Daniel Nadler told Forbes that he views the commoditization of AI copilots similar to TV streaming services, which have to differentiate around content and partnerships.

  • The Series B funds will help OpenEvidence add more strategic content to its medical knowledge library, and fuel new products that can take advantage of it – including its new DeepConsult research assistant.
  • DeepConsult helps physicians get up to speed on a topic by cross-referencing hundreds of studies to deliver comprehensive Ph.D.-level research reports in a matter of hours.

The Takeaway

OpenEvidence is off to the races, and “the fastest-growing platform for doctors in history” still hasn’t even started charging doctors to use it.

OpenEvidence Partners With JAMA Ahead of Next Raise

Posted on by Jason Barry

“The fastest-growing platform for doctors in history” continues to step on the gas, and OpenEvidence is reportedly on the verge of notching a $3B valuation after inking a deal to bring JAMA Network journals to its AI medical search engine.

The multi-year content agreement will make full-text articles from the American Medical Association’s JAMA, JAMA Network Open, and 11 specialty journals available directly within the OpenEvidence platform.

  • OpenEvidence’s medical search engine helps clinicians make decisions at the point of care, turning natural language queries into structured answers with detailed citations.
  • The model was purpose-built for healthcare using training data from strategic partners like the New England Journal of Medicine, which joined the platform through a similar deal earlier this year.

The Disney+ content strategy has arrived in healthcare. OpenEvidence compares its approach to streaming services that drive subscriptions through exclusive movies.

  • If a physician wants information from top journals to support decision making, they’ll either have to get it straight from the source or use OpenEvidence, just like how anyone who wants to stream Moana needs to go to Disney+.
  • The kicker is that OpenEvidence is available at no cost to verified physicians, and advertising generates all of the revenue. 

The blueprint is working like a charm. OpenEvidence has over 350k doctors using its platform plus another 50k joining each month, and it’s apparently close to raising $100M at a $3B valuation just a few months after closing its $75M Series A.

  • It’s rare to find hockey stick growth in digital health, and OpenEvidence is a good reminder that many areas of healthcare change slowly… then all at once.
  • It also isn’t too surprising to hear that VC’s like Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins are lining up to fund a company with a similar ad-supported business model to Doximity – one of the only successful healthcare IPOs since the start of the pandemic.

The Takeaway

Content is king, and OpenEvidence is locking in partnerships to make sure its platform is wearing the crown. The results have been speaking for themselves, but healthcare’s genAI streaming wars are just getting started.

OpenEvidence Closes $75M in Series A Funding

Posted on by Jason Barry

OpenEvidence might be the new kid on the medical chatbot block, but it’s already “the fastest-growing platform for doctors in history,” and $75M of Series A funding just made it the youngest unicorn in healthcare.

Founder Daniel Nadler describes OpenEvidence as an AI copilot, with an experience that feels similar to ChatGPT yet is actually a “very different organism” due to the data it was trained on.

OpenEvidence functions as a specialized medical search engine that helps clinicians make decisions at the point of care, turning natural language queries into structured answers with detailed citations.

  • The model was purpose-built for healthcare by exclusively using training data from strategic partners like the New England Journal of Medicine – no internet forums or Reddit threads in sight.
  • The kicker? It’s available at no cost to verified physicians and generates its revenue through advertising. 

Happy users are their own growth strategy, and OpenEvidence claims that 25% of doctors in the U.S. have already used the product since its launch in 2023. It’s also adding 40k new doctors each month through word-of-mouth referrals and glowing reviews of its ability to:

  • Handle complex case-based prompts
  • Address clinical cases holistically
  • Provide really good references

The 1,000 pound gorilla in this space is Wolters Kluwer and its UpToDate clinical evidence engine. 

  • Although Wolters Kluwer has been inking partnerships with companies like Corti and Abridge to bring new AI capabilities to UpToDate, OpenEvidence is built from the ground up as an AI-first solution.
  • If WoltersKluwer is an encyclopedia, OpenEvidence is ChatGPT, and it’ll be interesting to watch the plays that both sides make as they battle for market share.

The Takeaway

OpenEvidence isn’t a solution in search of a problem, it’s a sleek new tool addressing an immediate need for plenty of providers. It’s rare to see the type of viral adoption that OpenEvidence managed to generate, which is a good reminder that many areas of healthcare change slowly… then all at once.

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