Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and medical knowledge platform OpenEvidence have partnered to expand access to AI-powered clinical decision support for physicians in regions where such technology is not widely available. The initiative will provide healthcare providers in dozens of low- and middle-income countries with a specialised version of OpenEvidence at no cost.
OpenEvidence provides answers to doctors’ questions using peer-reviewed medical research and treatment guidelines. The platform is currently available free of charge to clinicians in the United States and Europe.
Under the new initiative, the companies are rolling out the service in about 100 countries, including Uganda, Angola, Sudan, Haiti and Mongolia, according to a list provided by OpenEvidence.
The collaboration is aimed at regions where limited access to medical literature, specialist expertise and continuing medical education can affect patient care. Healthcare systems around the world are exploring generative AI as a potential way to help address shortages of physicians and medical specialists.
Supporters of AI-based medical tools say such systems can help doctors navigate large volumes of medical information more quickly. At the same time, critics have cautioned that AI systems trained mainly on data from high-income countries may not always reflect local healthcare practices and conditions.
The companies said Anthropic’s technology will provide the back-end support for the initiative, while OpenEvidence will adapt the system for different regions and take local healthcare infrastructure into account.
“Access to medical knowledge shouldn’t depend on geography,” said Daniel Nadler, founder of OpenEvidence.
OpenEvidence has already been working with health organisations in Rwanda and Botswana to adapt its tools to local conditions. The company said these settings can have different disease patterns, diagnostic resources and available treatments compared with wealthier countries.
Nadler said the system being developed for these regions is designed to account for such differences. “One hundred percent of what we are building for these places is context adaptive,” he said.
The companies said access to smartphones could also help the initiative reach physicians working in areas with limited healthcare infrastructure. Nadler noted that even in places where medical facilities do not have electricity available around the clock, most physicians have access to smartphones.
He said this could provide doctors with access to medical information that, a decade ago, would have been available mainly through leading institutions such as the Mayo Clinic.
The scale of OpenEvidence’s existing use in the United States also highlights the platform’s growing reach. According to Nadler, US clinicians consulted OpenEvidence 42 million times in August alone. He also said that several hundred million Americans will have been treated by a doctor who used OpenEvidence to help guide care during 2026.
The new collaboration comes as Anthropic continues to expand its work in healthcare and life sciences. Reuters reported last week that the AI company had established a laboratory for physical biology work as it develops its ambitions in drug science.
Anthropic President Daniela Amodei said the technology has advanced enough to support efforts to expand OpenEvidence into regions with fewer resources.
“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,” Amodei said.
Dr. Ahmed Bendary, a cardiologist at Benha University in Egypt, said expanding access beyond the United States and Europe could be significant for regions where institutions have limited access to major medical journals.
“would be a tremendous leap forward, particularly in regions where institutional subscriptions to major medical journals are limited, making evidence-based, point-of-care tools even more vital,” Bendary said.
Anthropic and OpenEvidence have not disclosed the financial terms of their collaboration.
