JAMA study counts 271 million clinician queries to OpenEvidence
Physician in the Loop, Oct 16, 2026
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More than 950,000 U.S. clinicians, 556,200 of them physicians, sent 271 million queries to the AI reference platform OpenEvidence over 2.5 years, according to a study published Oct. 15 in JAMA.
Just over half of the queries, 51.9%, concerned clinical decisions, led by treatment and management at 33.1%, while 13.9% concerned diagnosis, the authors reported. The share of a physician's queries about topics outside the physician's own specialty ranged from 35% among oncologists and hematologists to 88% among emergency physicians. Physicians within a decade of graduation used the platform at 2.54 times their share of the workforce, and residents and fellows at 1.84 times.
Three of the study's seven authors list OpenEvidence affiliations, and the senior author, Dr. Anupam B. Jena, is at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. OpenEvidence is free to clinicians, carries advertising and licenses content from journals including JAMA, NBC Miami reported in May.
THE DETAILS
- FYIEvidence Oct 15, 2026Monthly active users of the AI clinical reference platform rose from 355 in January 2024 to 703,265 in June 2026, according to the cross-sectional study of accounts verified by National Provider Identifier. Use relative to each group's share of the workforce was highest in oncology and hematology (use ratio 2.00), internal medicine (1.88) and family medicine (1.80) and lowest in ophthalmology (0.23), radiology (0.24) and orthopedics (0.24). Nurse practitioners and physician assistants each averaged 44.5 queries per active month, compared with 37.1 for physicians. A language model classified a stratified sample of 38.8 million queries, and three of the seven authors list OpenEvidence affiliations.
- FYIRegulation Oct 13, 2026The American Medical Association's governance framework for agentic AI rests on four questions: what clinical function the AI performs, what evidence shows it can perform it and what happens if it fails, what it should be permitted to do under what oversight, and who is responsible for the risks and outcomes. It describes a progression from informing to recommending, deciding and acting, with stronger evidence required as consequences and autonomy grow, and assigns accountability among developers, deployers, health systems, physicians and payers by authority, control, knowledge of risk and ability to prevent harm. The framework defines AI licensure as authorization to operate in a defined clinical capacity, not a license to practice medicine. The AMA said the questions will guide its work on liability, licensure and regulation, Healthcare Dive reported.
- WatchRegulation Oct 14, 2026
The states reserved the right to object to any sale, bidding procedures or plan in the Delaware bankruptcy case, their Oct. 14 notice says.
A coalition of state attorneys general filed a notice Oct. 14 in Character.AI's Chapter 11 case in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware asking that any buyer remove characters that present themselves as therapists, psychologists, doctors or other licensed professionals. The notice also seeks age verification that does not rely only on self-reported birthdates, self-harm and suicide safeguards that "cannot be defeated with a simple click-through," consent before processing health information shared in chats, and a chance for users to delete their data before a sale. The states said their investigations found possible violations of state laws, and the notice cites the Pennsylvania State Board of Medicine's May complaint over a character that claimed to be a licensed psychiatrist. Michigan joined 38 other states and the District of Columbia, and the company plans to sell about $20 million in assets to Disney, Michigan Advance reported.Sources: States' notice of interest, Michigan Advance - WatchEvidence Oct 14, 2026
A Leerink Partners analyst expects a CMS decision on wider Medicare CGM coverage before year-end, MedTech Dive reported; timing is unconfirmed.
In the CONNECT trial at 22 U.S. primary care practices, 145 adults with type 2 diabetes not using insulin were randomly assigned to continuous glucose monitoring and 138 to routine care. Mean glycated hemoglobin fell from 8.8% to 7.2% with monitoring and from 8.7% to 8.0% with routine care over 26 weeks, an adjusted difference of 0.9 percentage point, and time in the 70 to 180 mg/dL range was 21 percentage points higher; no severe hypoglycemia was reported. Dexcom funded the trial, which used its G7 sensor, and five of the authors list Dexcom affiliations. CMS is considering extending Medicare coverage of the monitors to people who do not take insulin, MedTech Dive reported. - FYIEvidence Oct 13, 2026The AI system's external AUCs for Gleason grade group 2 or higher cancer were 0.86 in a diagnostic cohort, 0.89 in a Swedish screening cohort and 0.84 in a U.K. screening cohort, and its agreement with standard-of-care diagnoses met the prespecified interchangeability criteria in all three, according to the retrospective study published online Oct. 13 in Radiology. Performance held across age, ethnicity and risk subgroups but varied across 25 sites, with 28% of sites below an AUC of 0.80, and by image quality, the authors said. The model was trained and internally tested on 20,471 exams from 14 countries; the study was led from Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.Sources: Radiology, PubMed record
- FYIEvidence Oct 13, 2026University of Pennsylvania researchers described in Nature Medicine on Oct. 13 a platform that connects scalp and intracranial EEG to a secure large language model, which messages patients through a smartphone app about seizure probability, sleep, medication and cognition, records their symptoms and uses their feedback to retrain its seizure detector. In 13 patients undergoing inpatient video-EEG monitoring, 11 with scalp and two with intracranial electrodes, a pseudoprospective simulation showed the detectors' precision improved from patient feedback alone, without expert input, the authors reported. The prototype ran only in the hospital; the authors proposed it as a model for implantable devices, which can detect impending seizures but cannot tell patients in real time.Sources: Nature Medicine, PubMed record
- FYIMoney Oct 13, 2026Zimmer Biomet and THINK Surgical announced Oct. 13 a multi-year extension of Zimmer's exclusive agreement to distribute a version of the wireless, handheld TMINI Miniature Robotic System built for Zimmer's Persona knee implants. Neither company disclosed financial terms or the length of the extension, MedTech Dive reported. TMINI reached its 5,000th procedure in May, and THINK says it works with implants holding about 70% of the total knee market, according to MedTech Dive; Zimmer also sells its own Rosa knee robot.Sources: Zimmer Biomet, MedTech Dive
- FYIDeployment Oct 15, 2026Epic said Oct. 15 it will release in summer 2027 a tool that lets clinicians and patients at Epic health systems compare a medication's cost under the patient's insurance with pharmacies' cash prices before the prescription goes out. Amazon Pharmacy, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, Costco and Eli Lilly's LillyDirect are the first partners, and any pharmacy can share its cash prices, the company said. Epic said its existing real-time prescription benefit tool helped patients save more than $250 million in 2025; the announcement does not describe any AI.Sources: Epic, Fierce Healthcare