Thanks to new investors, the development of EvidenceHunt is gaining momentum. Healthcare professionals will soon be able to search not only PubMed, but also all kinds of guidelines and databases and query them while chatting with the help of AI.
Things are moving fast for EvidenceHunt, the startup by psychiatrist Christiaan Vinkers, Philippe Habets and David van IJzendoorn. Since this year, EvidenceHunt has been a welcome tool for healthcare professionals. Using a ChatGPT-like algorithm, they can search all medical articles published in PubMed. Within seconds, EvidenceHunt provides a substantiated answer, including references.
Recently, users reacted with great enthusiasm to the news that EvidenceHunt had launched a beta version, which allows users to directly access the medical literature by asking questions.
Guidelines and medical resources
Meanwhile, they have already taken steps forward, Vinkers says. "We hear from many doctors and researchers that they want to be able to query not only PubMed, but also other sources. Think guidelines and other medical sources. We are working hard on that."
"We see that many physicians are already using EvidenceHunt on a daily basis for issues related to patient treatment that, often due to new developments, are not common knowledge. Consider the question, 'Can you give an SGLT inhibitor in Diabetes Type 1?' This is a topic where there has been a lot of development recently."
"With EvidenceHunt, you instantly get the answer complete with the references based on the latest scientific insights that support the answer. We believe that with this EvidenceHunt can become a standard application in the toolbox of healthcare providers and scientists, among others."
Funding
EvidenceHunt recently received funding from a number of healthcare angels to build out their platform. This puts the startup in gear. "We have good ideas and great plans, but we were doing it alongside another full-time job. With this funding, we can really make meters." Co-founders Philippe Habets and David van IJzendoorn started working full-time for EvidenceHunt starting in September.
The plan is to further expand EvidenceHunt as a search engine with additional features that users would like to see reflected in both the scientific literature and a variety of guideline databases. "People can interact with the medical databases themselves in a reliable and simple way," Vinkers outlines.
Transparent
EvidenceHunt aims to make knowledge accessible in a scientifically sound manner in the medical field. "The most added value for us is in the reliability. It's from professionals for professionals. And we work with our own models, so it's transparent."
Chatting with guidelines
Chatting with guidelines, which has been possible in the beta version since recently, is interesting, Vinkers acknowledges. "In addition, there is a lot of need for people to reliably find the scientific evidence, put it together and share it. If you have something well figured out, you can save it. You can send a summary with the sources attached to your colleagues. If you are going to update guidelines, you might want to know what studies have been added as of 2020, for example. So you can very quickly create your own library and search it in a reliable way. And that without spending a long time searching all the sources with separate queries."
According to Vinkers, there are many people for whom this is of interest. "Of course there is a group that systematically searches all data sources, that has a lot of time and manpower for that. But a larger group is just googling. Doctors, scientists, but also mental health institutions and hospitals. For them, this is a huge godsend."
Reliable response
"They want to have a reliable answer quickly. With EvidenceHunt, they don't have to search all kinds of databases themselves, where the question is what exactly you'll find if you're not an expert in this. They get access to scientific evidence with source attribution. An access they didn't have or didn't use until now."
Paid version
With the next phase EvidenceHunt enters, the business model will also change. So far, it is completely free. But there will eventually be a paid version. "We didn't start doing it to make a lot of money, but if you make investments, you should be able to get them out. There will be a version where you can log in and share, it won't be totally free. Still, there will always be a part for free."
