Bridging the Gap to Medical Knowledge

In this episode, we chat with Zachary Ziegler, the CTO and co-founder of OpenEvidence. Zachary, with a background in academic machine learning from Harvard, discusses the founding mission of OpenEvidence: to make the vast and rapidly growing body of biomedical knowledge accessible to healthcare professionals. He emphasizes that OpenEvidence aims to be a go-to tool that empowers physicians at every stage of patient care by providing evidence-based answers derived from medical literature, guidelines, and other trusted sources.

Zachary details the initial inspiration for OpenEvidence, the evolution of the product, and the challenges of building a system that can effectively process complex medical queries and surface relevant, high-quality evidence. He shares that OpenEvidence has seen significant adoption, currently being used by a large percentage of US physicians and having a global reach. The platform caters to a wide range of users, from those in rural community practices to academics at well-funded institutions, addressing diverse needs from quick clinical questions to in-depth research. Looking to the future, Zachary is excited about continuing to improve the quality of responses and exploring the broader potential of AI to modernize healthcare.