Image Credits: Fierce Healthcare
Epocrates, a clinical decision and drug reference support app, has established an AI assistant feature that will help clinicians with fast, accurate answers related to prescription medications to boost clinical decision-making. Epocrate is a 25-year-old company owned by Athenahealth that is used by above 1 million healthcare professionals, as per the executives' recorded data. The Epocrates drug reference app provides a free version involving robust features such as an interaction checker, pill identifier, and drug information, and assists around 430,000 drug lookups a day. Clinicians also have access to the enhanced content via paid subscription. The company’s primary focus is on drug information features as a medication reference app following to extension of its content to guidelines and disease information.
Epocrates developed its AI assist tool to enable the fastest and precise drug details with the drug and dosing interactions from a reliable source to answer the difficult medication questions at the point of care, claimed by the vice president of product and technology at Epocrates, Kabir Seth, in a conversation with Fierce Healthcare at the Fierce Pharma Week 2025 conference in Philadelphia. AI assist tool serves beyond the static information with its accurate answers in a well-structured conversational style based on the industry’s drug monograph content, and also prompt references to the information source. The AI tool works like a dialogue box, including large language models (LLMs) that merge with certain patient histories.
Clinicians are free to ask niche questions that enable apps to extend their insights into how exactly clinicians ask and think when it comes to patient care decision-making. The AI tools enable intelligent summaries by digging into monographs. Those are the accurate guides, explaining the need for important information regarding certain treatment or drug. This tool will be visible in the drug interaction checker of Epocrates. The AI assist feature will reveal retail prices for medications to clinicians, and further, the company intends to add insurance pricing and real-time affordability insights.
Apart from the AI assist tool, the OpenEvidence medical information platform has sponsored $300 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. Doximity currently introduced Pathway Medical for $63 million to enhance its healthcare AI potency and is planning to provide additional AI tools to doctors. Seth stated that AI-powered clinical decision contribution to the market is in the ‘early innings’.
Kesiya Chacko is a healthcare market research expert with 4+ years of experience, specializing in analyzing industry trends, assessing market opportunities, and providing actionable insights for businesses in healthcare sectors.
