PHILADELPHIA, PA — Penn Medicine is deploying OpenEvidence’s artificial intelligence-powered clinical decision-support tools to more than 10,000 clinicians across its seven-hospital U.S. health system while extending the technology through its longstanding health partnership in Botswana.
The agreement will give Penn Medicine clinicians access to evidence-based information drawn from medical literature and patient information in electronic health records. The tools are designed to surface relevant clinical evidence within physicians’ existing workflows.
Penn Medicine also plans to extend the collaboration through the Botswana-UPenn Partnership, working with clinicians and partners in Botswana to develop clinical AI tools tailored to medical practice and available resources in the country.
The initiative broadens Penn Medicine’s use of AI in clinical decision-making while testing how the technology can be adapted for health systems with different resources and operating conditions.
“A partnership like this gives our clinicians, here at home and elsewhere, the ability to instantly surface the best available medical evidence in the context of the patient in front of them,” Srinath Adusumalli, Penn Medicine’s vice president and chief health information officer, stated.
Penn Medicine is considering integrating AI into additional programs, including its Penn Pathways clinical decision-support program, electronic consultations and in-person and virtual care.
The Botswana component builds on a partnership Penn has maintained for 25 years with the University of Botswana and Botswana’s Ministry of Health. The Botswana-UPenn Partnership has supported clinician and researcher training, postgraduate medical education and research involving HIV/AIDS, oncology and population health.
Rather than deploying the same system used in the U.S. without modification, Penn Medicine teams and their Botswana partners plan to design tools around local clinical needs and practice conditions.
“Building a customized set of tools in direct partnership with BUP clinicians and partners reflects a shared conviction that effective clinical AI will be shaped by local expertise and adapted for the conditions they practice in,” Farouk Dako, director of the Botswana-UPenn Partnership, stated.
OpenEvidence Chief Medical Officer Travis Zack described the collaboration as part of an effort to develop and evaluate clinical AI for health-care environments with varying levels of resources.
The partnership gives OpenEvidence access to a large academic health system for broader deployment of its clinical decision-support technology while providing Penn Medicine with another AI platform for integrating medical evidence and patient-specific information at the point of care.
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