Consumer behavior in health is undergoing a radical transformation. The catalyst wasn't a new policy or insurance plan. It was information.
From the explosion of interest in GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic to the rise of science-based educators like Andrew Huberman and the debates surrounding the COVID mRNA vaccines, the public is becoming aggressively bio-curious. People are no longer satisfied with simplified, ad-driven health advice. They are digging into mechanisms, seeking protocols, and demanding to see the data for themselves.
OpenEvidence is the proof that this market shift is real. It has demonstrated product-market fit by providing a "verticalized ChatGPT" for medicine—a tool that answers clinical questions with high fidelity by grounding its responses in trusted medical journals. It bypassed the noise of the consumer web (WebMD) and provided a reliable interface for truth.
They achieved this by doing the hard work of securing partnerships with the gatekeepers: NEJM, JAMA, NCCN, and others. This was the necessary first step to validate the model.
But there is an opportunity to go further. While OpenEvidence has revolutionized the search interface, it still relies on the traditional supply chain of medical publishing—a system where public funds pay for research, scientists volunteer for peer review, and publishers sell the results back behind paywalls.
The next frontier isn't just about reading the papers better. It's about changing how the papers are written and shared.
OpenEvidence Research Hub is a thought experiment on applying the "GitHub model" to medical science.
By creating a platform where researchers can contribute findings directly to a public repository, we can invert the current model. Instead of value accruing to the publisher who locks the data away, value accrues to the network that verifies and distributes it.
This would create a formidable moat for OpenEvidence. It moves the platform from being a reader of the medical record to being the place where the medical record happens.
This project is a design prototype exploring these concepts. You can view the live experiment below.
View Live Prototype →Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with OpenEvidence. I am just a fan of the product and the mission.