Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and medical knowledge platform OpenEvidence are collaborating to bring AI-powered clinical decision support to physicians in regions without access to the technology, the companies said on Tuesday.
The new initiative is a specialised version available to healthcare providers for free in dozens of low- and middle-income countries where limited access to medical literature, specialist expertise and continuing medical education can impair patient care. Healthcare systems worldwide are exploring whether generative AI can help address shortages of physicians and specialists. Supporters argue that AI tools can help clinicians quickly navigate vast amounts of medical information, while critics caution that systems trained primarily on data from high-income countries may not reflect local practice conditions.
The initiative is being rolled out in about 100 countries, including Uganda, Angola, Sudan, Haiti, and Mongolia, according to a list provided by OpenEvidence. In August alone, US clinicians consulted OpenEvidence 42 million times, according to Nadler. In 2026, several hundred million Americans will have been treated by a doctor who used OpenEvidence to help guide care, he said.
Anthropic’s technology will provide back-end support, while OpenEvidence will tailor the system to different regions, taking healthcare infrastructure into account, the companies said. “The technology itself has advanced so dramatically that the sort of structure needed for (bringing OpenEvidence to low-resource regions) is there, but the market incentives alone would not let it happen without this type of entrepreneurial, philanthropically minded work,” Anthropic president Daniela Amodei said. Earlier this year, OpenEvidence said it was working with health organisations in Rwanda and Botswana to adapt its tools for settings where disease patterns, diagnostic resources and available treatments differ markedly from those in wealthier countries.
