Nabla has added a way for clinicians to ask OpenEvidence about an encounter while working beside a generated note, bringing literature searches into the company's documentation workflow, Nabla said Oct. 15.
Nabla says a question can include selected visit details such as patient demographics, diagnosis and current medications, along with clinician-provided context and the note generated by its platform. It says OpenEvidence responds with answers citing peer-reviewed medical research.
The company presents the feature as a way to reduce the friction of moving between documentation software and a separate source of clinical guidance. Nabla says clinicians may otherwise need to enter visit information again when looking for reference material. It describes the addition as part of a wider move from note creation toward other clinical workflow tools.
Nabla says encounter context sent through the integration is anonymized. Its third-party notice describes the context as de-identified, makes users responsible for what they put in a query and tells them not to submit protected health information (PHI). The notice also says OpenEvidence may associate queries and related activity with a clinician's account.
According to the notice, OpenEvidence's policies govern information it receives and may permit the use of platform activity for service improvement, personalization, advertising and analytics, as well as the retention of anonymized information. These are terms described in Nabla's notice, not independently verified practices.
Nabla says OpenEvidence is used by millions of verified health professionals in the United States but gives no exact total or date for that estimate. Selwyn-Lloyd McPherson, MD, a comprehensive neurologist, clinical neurophysiologist and epileptologist, said, “What once took hours of research now takes minutes.” The announcement provided no measured time savings or patient-outcome results.
Northwestern Medicine said its clinicians could launch OpenEvidence from Epic beginning Oct. 8.
