Elsevier, PhactMI to develop MI semantic search platform

Elsevier and PhactMI are collaborating to develop a semantic search platform that will allow healthcare providers to access medical documentation. The AI-powered search portal can access medical documentation from 30 major pharmaceutical manufacturers, as well as relevant information from the FDA.

According to Elsevier, a science- and health-focused analytics business, and PhactMI, a nonprofit collaboration of pharmaceutical leaders, there is an urgent need for reliable and easy-to-access information. Elsevier said almost one-fifth of pharmaceutical spending goes toward research and development (R&D), and that the new medical information (MI) search platform will help overcome common R&D challenges that contribute to the cost.

The software builds upon Elsevier's cloud-based, AI-ready data platform Entellect, released in November 2018. Entellect -- which collects, de-siloes, and contextualizes drug, target and disease data from a variety of sources -- filters out promotional materials, enabling healthcare providers to find and treat patients with objective information.

Entellect is a flexible platform built for compatibility with custom applications; the vendors claim building the PhactMI search function on top of this software will create one source for a horde of relevant, impartial MI for healthcare professionals to analyze efficiently.

Being a semantic search platform, PhactMI's Entellect-powered MI release will identify searcher intent, improving the relevancy of results, making the portal more efficient than keyword-based search portals, according to the vendors.

Other AI-based healthcare portals include Philips' Insights Marketplace and GE's Edison; these, along with many other EHR platforms and software, emphasize patient diagnosis and care plans, whereas PhactMI's search portal zeroes in on access to general MI for R&D purposes.

Elsevier and PhactMI plan to release the Entellect-powered search portal in Q4 2019.