When UpToDate, the decades-old, expert-curated medical resource for doctors, announced the launch of a generative artificial intelligence update last week, clinicians responded with a common refrain: It’s about time.
Over the last two years, doctors have rapidly adopted chatbot-like tools powered by large language models that give them quick, through-written answers to medical queries. Younger residents in particular have been open to experimenting with generative AI, which promises to make physicians faster — maybe even smarter — at making hundreds of day-to-day calls about patient care. As startups like OpenEvidence and Pathway, recently acquired by Doximity, claim hundreds of thousands of physician users, clinicians wondered when UpToDate — the legacy tool that stood to lose the most to AI’s shiny new toys — would catch up.
“It’s the obvious thing to do,” said Jonathan Chen, a hospitalist who studies healthcare AI at Stanford University. “And their lunch is being eaten right now.”
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