OpenEvidence enters prescription, prior auth arena

OpenEvidence has partnered with Tandem to add prescription generation and prior authorization submission capabilities to its clinical decision support tool.

OpenEvidence provides a large language model-based search engine for clinicians. Clinicians can ask the platform medical questions and receive answers based on evidence gathered and synthesized from various sources, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Network and Mayo Clinic Platform. According to the company, its platform supports more than 1 million clinical consultations per day in the United States.

Tandem is an AI-powered tool that automates the prescription process, including prior authorization, appeals and routing prescriptions to the patient's preferred pharmacy. The tool, which is embedded within EHR workflows, also enrolls patients in savings and support programs as needed.   

The partnership's goals are to reduce delays between diagnosis and treatment, expand patient access to medications and reduce administrative burdens for clinicians.

"Clinicians shouldn't have to choose between delivering care and navigating administrative complexity," said Ania Bilski, M.D., vice president of clinical AI at OpenEvidence, in the press release. "By partnering with Tandem, we're removing friction from both clinical and operational workflows -- so clinicians can focus on getting patients the right treatments, faster." 

The partnership follows OpenEvidence's initial push into the revenue cycle management space with the launch of its Coding Intelligence feature late last month. The AI-driven feature automatically provides ICD-10 diagnoses and evaluation and management (E/M) level recommendations within clinical notes.

The company has also made other recent moves to diversify its platform. In February, it launched an audio telehealth feature that allows clinicians to call patients using a customizable caller ID name and number. The feature also enables them to securely send and receive text messages and faxes within the OpenEvidence app.

These launches come on the heels of a closed series D fundraising round in January that added $250 million to OpenEvidence's coffers. The round, led by Thrive Capital and DST Global, brought the company's total funding to nearly $700 million and sent its valuation soaring to $12 billion.

Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers the virtual healthcare landscape, including telehealth, remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics.