By April 2026, OpenEvidence was recording nearly 27 million clinical consultations per month, up 50 percent from December 2025, as roughly 65 percent of U.S. physicians now use the platform. In April, Mount Sinai Health System signed an enterprise deal to embed OpenEvidence inside its Epic electronic health record, extending access to nurses and pharmacists across all seven of its New York hospitals. A month earlier, the company launched Coding Intelligence™, an automated billing tool that generates diagnosis and procedure codes directly from clinical notes.
An NBC News investigation in May 2026 found that most patients don't know their doctors consult the tool, and that some physicians reported the AI occasionally gives wrong answers on rare conditions or edge cases. CEO Daniel Nadler acknowledged the pharmaceutical advertising model may not be the company's long-term approach, signaling a potential shift toward hospital licensing fees. The Trump administration and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. separately moved in May to loosen FDA oversight requirements for AI health software, reducing the regulatory burden on clinical decision tools.
Why it matters
Most Americans' doctors now consult AI before treating them—and most patients have no idea.
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Voices
Curated perspectives — historical figures and your fellow readers.
Cecil Rhodes
(1853-1902) ·Victorian Era · industry
Fictional AI pastiche — not real quote.
"A million consultations in a single day — the railways of medicine have arrived, and just as I laid iron across a continent to bind its peoples to one civilising order, so this machine binds the scattered knowledge of ten thousand journals into a single imperial intelligence that no provincial doctor dare ignore."
0% found this insightful
Dorothy Parker
(1893-1967) ·Jazz Age · wit
Fictional AI pastiche — not real quote.
"So the doctors have traded one oracle for another — only this one is sponsored by the very pills it's prescribing. We used to worry that medicine was becoming an art; now I see it's merely become advertising."
0% found this insightful
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Trump administration moves to loosen AI healthcare safeguards
Regulatory
The Trump administration and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed relaxing federal oversight requirements for AI health software, including dropping transparency requirements for AI decision-making algorithms and reducing FDA review burdens on clinical decision support tools. The American Hospital Association raised concerns about removing algorithmic transparency standards.
NBC News investigation: most patients unaware doctors use OpenEvidence
Media
NBC News reported that roughly 650,000 U.S. physicians actively use OpenEvidence, with 1.2 million using it internationally, while most patients have not been told their doctor consults the tool. Some physicians told NBC the AI occasionally gives wrong answers on rare conditions. CEO Daniel Nadler said the pharmaceutical ad model may not be the company's long-term approach.
Mount Sinai signs first enterprise deal, embeds OpenEvidence in Epic
Enterprise Adoption
Mount Sinai Health System became OpenEvidence's first enterprise-wide customer, embedding the platform inside its Epic electronic health record and extending access to registered nurses and pharmacists—not just physicians—across all seven of its New York hospitals.
OpenEvidence launches Coding Intelligence, entering medical billing
Product Launch
OpenEvidence released Coding Intelligence™, which automatically generates ICD-10 diagnosis codes, CPT billing codes, and evaluation-and-management level recommendations from clinical notes at the end of each visit, expanding the platform from clinical search into revenue cycle management.
One million physician-AI consultations in a single day
Adoption Milestone
OpenEvidence announced that on March 10, verified physicians conducted one million consultations with its AI in 24 hours, the first time this threshold has been crossed by any medical AI system.
Series D doubles valuation to $12 billion
Funding
OpenEvidence raised $250 million co-led by Thrive Capital and DST Global, bringing total funding to nearly $700 million and doubling the company's valuation in three months.
Food and Drug Administration loosens clinical decision support guidance
Regulatory
The FDA updated its guidance on clinical decision support software, loosening requirements for tools that meet certain criteria—a regulatory shift that may affect how platforms like OpenEvidence are classified.
Series C at $6 billion valuation
Funding
OpenEvidence raised $200 million led by Google Ventures, with Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Blackstone, and Thrive participating—tripling months after the Series B.
First AI to score a perfect 100% on the USMLE
Technical Milestone
OpenEvidence's AI became the first in history to achieve a perfect score on the United States Medical Licensing Examination, the standardized test required for all physicians practicing in the country.
Series B at $3.5 billion; DeepConsult AI agent launched
Funding
OpenEvidence raised $210 million co-led by Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins and released DeepConsult, a free AI agent that autonomously analyzes and cross-references peer-reviewed studies for physicians.
JAMA Network signs content partnership
Partnership
The JAMA Network, a consortium of 13 peer-reviewed journals published by the American Medical Association, signed a multi-year deal to provide full-text content to OpenEvidence.
OpenEvidence named to Forbes AI 50 list
Recognition
Forbes included OpenEvidence in its annual AI 50 ranking of the most promising artificial intelligence companies.
Sequoia-led Series A at $1 billion valuation; NEJM partnership
Funding
OpenEvidence raised approximately $75 million from Sequoia Capital and simultaneously signed a multi-year content agreement with the New England Journal of Medicine, granting access to all published content from 1990 forward.
OpenEvidence AI first to score above 90% on medical licensing exam
Technical Milestone
OpenEvidence's AI system became the first to score above 90% on the United States Medical Licensing Examination, an early signal of the platform's clinical reasoning capabilities.
OpenEvidence founded
Company
Daniel Nadler and Zachary Ziegler found OpenEvidence to build an AI-powered medical search engine grounded in peer-reviewed literature, self-funding the company initially.
Historical Context
IBM Watson for Oncology (2013–2022)
2013–2022
What Happened
IBM invested roughly $4 billion acquiring health data companies and building Watson for Oncology, an AI system designed to recommend cancer treatments. Watson was deployed at hospitals worldwide, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, with the promise of democratizing expert oncology care.
Outcome
Short Term
Reports surfaced that Watson recommended unsafe and incorrect treatments in some cases. Physicians found the system unreliable for their local clinical contexts, and adoption stalled.
Long Term
IBM sold most of its Watson Health assets in 2022. The failure became a cautionary tale about deploying AI that couldn't integrate into real physician workflows or handle the messiness of actual clinical data.
Why It's Relevant Today
OpenEvidence's approach—grounding answers in specific peer-reviewed sources rather than attempting autonomous diagnosis—appears designed to avoid Watson's core failures. But the question of whether any AI system can be trusted at the scale of one million daily consultations without Watson-style errors emerging remains open.
UpToDate's rise as clinical reference standard (1992–present)
1992–present
What Happened
UpToDate launched in 1992 as a digital clinical reference tool authored by physicians. Over two decades, it grew to serve more than 2 million clinicians in over 190 countries and became used by 90% of United States academic medical centers. More than 80 published studies linked its use to improved patient outcomes.
Outcome
Short Term
UpToDate became effectively mandatory in many clinical settings, with physicians expected to consult it as part of standard practice.
Long Term
Wolters Kluwer acquired UpToDate's parent company. The tool proved that physician-facing reference tools could reach near-universal adoption, but the process took roughly two decades. UpToDate charges approximately $559 per year per user.
Why It's Relevant Today
OpenEvidence is compressing UpToDate's multi-decade adoption curve into a few years, achieving comparable physician penetration with a free, ad-supported model rather than a subscription. The comparison raises the question of whether OpenEvidence is the next UpToDate or whether the speed of adoption outpaces the validation that made UpToDate trustworthy.
Google's entry into health search (2019–present)
2019–present
What Happened
Google began surfacing medical information panels and symptom-checker features in search results, partnering with the Mayo Clinic and other health organizations. By the early 2020s, an estimated 7% of all Google searches were health-related, making the search engine the de facto first stop for health questions among consumers.
Outcome
Short Term
Google became the dominant gateway for consumer health information, though concerns about misinformation and self-diagnosis persisted.
Long Term
The experience demonstrated that whoever controls the search interface for health information wields enormous influence. Google's health search, however, never achieved deep adoption among physicians for clinical use, leaving a gap that purpose-built tools filled.
Why It's Relevant Today
OpenEvidence is doing for physicians what Google did for consumer health queries—becoming the default first stop. Multiple analysts have described the company as becoming 'the Google of medicine,' with similar implications for influence over clinical information flow and similar questions about whether an advertising-funded model serves users' best interests.
