epocrates, a drug reference and clinical decision-support app, developed an AI assistant feature that gives clinicians quick, concise answers about prescription medications to aid in clinical decision-making.
The 25-year-old company, which is owned by athenahealth, is used by more than 1 million healthcare professionals, according to executives. The epocrates drug reference app offers a free version that includes core features like drug information, an interaction checker and a pill identifier and sees about 430,000 drug lookups per day. Clinicians can also access advanced content through a paid subscription.
The company initially focused on drug information as a medication reference app and has since expanded its content to disease information and guidelines.
epocrates designed its AI assist tool to provide quick, accurate drug information, including dosing and drug interactions, from a trusted source to answer complex medication questions at the point of care, according to Kabir Seth, vice president of product and technology at epocrates, speaking with Fierce Healthcare on the sidelines of the Fierce Pharma Week 2025 conference in Philadelphia.
Instead of just displaying static information, the AI assist tool gives concise answers in a conversational format based on the company's drug monograph content and also provides references to the information source. The AI tool functions less like a search and more like a dialogue by using large language models (LLMs) combined with specific patient history, according to executives.
Clinicians can also ask more specific questions, which allows the app to mine expanded insights into how clinicians think and ask questions during patient care decision-making.
The AI tool also provides automated smart summaries by searching through monographs, which are detailed guides that explain important information about a specific drug or treatment. And the tool will tap into epocrates' drug interaction checker.
Seth asserts that epocrates is distinct from many AI companies that have jumped into the medical reference space as it doesn’t rely on AI alone. The company combines LLM-powered search with structured medical data and clinician-led oversight.
"As we've been looking at the technology around AI, we've always wanted to ensure that we maintain what we're built on, which is a foundation of trusted content. We have clinicians and medical experts within our team that are embedded with our product folks. Everything that we've built and the experience we've built is co-created with our trusted medical professionals," Seth said.
Clinicians are drowning in fragmented data and don’t have time to sift through noisy or inaccurate AI results. Epocrates designed its AI assist feature to cut through the vast amount of medical information to help healthcare professionals make safe, reliable prescribing decisions more quickly, according to executives.
"Epocrates is known for having clear answers in a way that doctors who don't have a lot of time can quickly glance at it to be able to get that answer. What we've seen in a lot of AI assistants is sometimes you get just a barrage of answers. We worked with our team, our medical experts, to be able to really identify what's the gold standard of what this answer should look like and trained our AI to then to be able to give a complete answer, while making sure it's safe and accurate," Seth said.
The AI assist feature will also give clinicians a retail price for medications, and the company plans to add insurance pricing as well for real-time affordability insights.
"Talking to healthcare professionals, there is this affordability insight challenge where they are talking to a patient, this is a drug they think the patient needs, but they don't know what the price of that drug is going to be. If we can provide that information quickly with the help of AI that's really transformative," Seth said.
Healthcare professionals are looking for AI solutions that support their work but still enables them to use their clinical judgment, he noted.
"From talking to our users, they are not interested in an AI assistant that tells them 'This is exactly what you should do.' They are very interested in an assistant that tells them the parameters or gives them options to then make the right decision," he said.
Many AI startups see big opportunities to use AI to modernize how doctors and clinicians access medical information, quickly pulling up insights from troves of data and putting it at clinicians' fingertips at the point of care. Companies are racing to expand their footprints in healthcare and to be the go-to tools for doctors in medical decision support.
OpenEvidence, a medical information platform, has raised $300 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. Doximity recently bought Pathway Medical for $63 million to bulk up its healthcare AI capabilities as it looks to offer more free AI tools to doctors.
Wolters Kluwer Health, a legacy player in clinical decision support solutions, has inked partnerships with AI startups to make its medical information more accessible to doctors. The company teamed up with Abridge to integrate its UpToDate resource into the startup's AI-based medical note-taking tool.
Seth says the AI-powered clinical decision support market is in "early innings."
"It really reminds me of when we were in the early days of mobile. People would take their desktop website and then put it on a mobile screen. I think, similarly, we are taking old patterns and ways that exist right now, maybe in mobile, and trying to apply them to what AI can do," he said. "I don't think we've cracked the code yet. I think all these folks that are jumping in, and it absolutely makes sense, but I don't think anyone has solved exactly what is the future interaction going to look like."
Being a trusted source of content for clinicians will be key to success in this market. Epocrates touts that its app has a net promoter score of 62.8 among its users.
"Users trust our content. They've used it for a long time. They recommend it to other folks. When we're applying this tech to that content, we want to continue that basis of trust," Seth said. "That's how we've been very deliberate in rolling this out and making sure that we haven't lost our DNA just because there's this new technology and its flashy, but we still need to focus on how is this solving the HCPs' issues? Is it faster? Is it more efficient? Is it safe? Is it complete and accurate?"
Epocrates plans to expand its AI-assist tool to include more disease information and improve its drug comparison capabilities. The company is also exploring how to integrate its AI features into athenahealth's technology, Seth noted.
The company also aims to personalize the AI assistant based on user specialties and past searches to enhance efficiency and decision-making for healthcare professionals.