OpenEvidence
Hacker ApprovedClinical search tool in AI tools
Doctors recommend it as a fast medical reference that can replace UpToDate, though critics say generalist AI models outperform it.
Doctors recommend it as a fast medical reference that can replace UpToDate, though critics say generalist AI models outperform it.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 12
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 12 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Widely used by doctors
“They've done a good job of capturing the doctor market while offering a useful product.”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50-55% by triage doctors” “it's apparently what many doctors have started using for diagnosing patients”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Encephalitis” Replaces UpToDate and similar tools
“Most used as a Wikipedia-on-the-fly. Replaces UpToDate and other POC tools”
Comment from 15 Aug 2026 in “AI Isn't Outthinking Mathematicians. It's Out-Remembering Them” “We replaced them with OpenEvidence.”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50-55% by triage doctors”
What people said
11 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“seems to be maybe the one more modern solution that's breaking through for now”
“Most used as a Wikipedia-on-the-fly. Replaces UpToDate and other POC tools”
“Seems pretty good but you need to be a health care pro, it locks you out rather fast.”
“he could already see this same dumbing down effect emerging among his providers”
“I believe OpenEvidence does something like this with medical papers.”
“Openevidence.com is not available in the EU, so I would actually be weary of recommending it.”
“it's apparently what many doctors have started using for diagnosing patients”
“They've done a good job of capturing the doctor market while offering a useful product.”
“We replaced them with OpenEvidence.”
“It has access to full text from some of the major medical journals. But generalist models seem to outperform it.”
“scrapes and paraphrases UpToDate and sells the same information in a GPT wrapper”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.