Exclusive: New partnership aims to help doctors harness AI to diagnose patients

Scientific information and data analytics giant Elsevier is partnering with a medical startup to give doctors the ability to use generative AI to access the most up-to-date medical research as they treat patients in real time.

Why it matters: Experts say the adoption of AI could dramatically improve the quality of care patients receive — while also lowering costs, cutting wait times and expanding access.

• "Most things don't create a net aggregate benefit," said Daniel Nadler, founder of OpenEvidence, the Cambridge, Mass. AI startup that's training on Elsevier's massive collection of medical journal data.

• Usually someone wins and someone else loses, argued Nadler. But this is "a net aggregate benefit to every participant in the system."

How it works: Elsevier is working with OpenEvidence to create ClinicalKey AI, a tool that allows doctors to input symptoms, explore drug interactions and get results that include data and information from hundreds of medical journals and other verified sources.

• Elsevier Health president Jan Herzhoff sees ClinicalKey AI as a potential "game-changer," estimating that half of all medical decisions can eventually be supported by generative AI.

• Elsevier said it is working with 1,000 clinicians this month in an early access program with plans to release the tool more broadly next year.

The big picture: What's happening in medicine is indicative of how AI is poised to reshape many industries.

• It's not about typing into a generic AI system like ChatGPT or Bard, but rather combining the power of the models with domain-specific data.

The result is that far fewer errors and "hallucinations" can occur than when querying a generic tool trained on the broader Internet....