Travis Zack on OpenEvidence and the Future of Medical AI

How can medical AI help doctors make better decisions while preserving clinical judgment and human connection? Travis Zack, MD, PhD, an oncologist, researcher, and chief medical officer of OpenEvidence, joins The Future of Medicine to discuss the future of AI in clinical care. OpenEvidence is an AI-powered platform that helps clinicians find and understand information from peer-reviewed medical research, clinical guidelines, and other trusted sources. In this episode, Zack explains why reliable medical AI depends not only on avoiding fabricated information, but also on finding the right evidence for each clinical question. He discusses how OpenEvidence is designed to bring relevant research into physicians’ workflows while leaving the final decision in the clinician’s hands. The conversation also looks ahead to more proactive forms of care. Zack describes a future in which AI could identify meaningful changes in a patient’s health or in the medical literature and alert physicians before the patient’s next scheduled visit.  Zack also shares his research using language from medical records to improve cancer care. By analyzing how patients describe symptoms such as chemotherapy-related nerve damage, researchers may be able to better predict when treatment should be adjusted to prevent lasting side effects. Together, Dr. Zack and host Errol Ozdalga, MD, explore whether reliance on AI could weaken physicians’ skills, how medical education may change, and why human reasoning and empathy will remain essential to medicine. They also consider a central question for health systems: Will AI be used only to increase efficiency, or will some of the time it saves be returned to patients? Thank you for listening.  **Call to action:** If you enjoy The Future of Medicine, subscribe for more conversations with leading scientists shaping the next era of healthcare. Please rate and review the podcast to help others discover these important discussions. Share with friends and colleagues who are curious about how science becomes medicine.