Study characterizes clinicians’ use of the AI platform OpenEvidence

Mass General Brigham

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Artificial intelligence-enabled tools allow clinicians to ask questions like, “How should I explain cholesterol levels to a patient?” or “What were the outcomes of the ATLANTIS trial?” and receive synthesized responses in seconds. However, data on which clinicians use these tools, how often they use them and for what purposes has remained limited.

A new study led by Vishal Patel, MD, MPH, and overseen by Anupam Jena, MD, PhD, both of Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School, helps close these knowledge gaps. The researchers analyzed clinicians’ use of OpenEvidence, the most widely used AI-powered clinical platform in the United States.

Between January 2024 and June 2026, active users, query volume and user retention increased dramatically. Overall, nearly 952,000 clinicians submitted approximately 271 million queries through the platform.

OpenEvidence was used widely across the clinical workforce but was especially popular among nurse practitioners, physician assistants, early-career physicians, residents and fellows. Use was also higher among physicians in oncology/hematology, internal medicine and family medicine, and lower among those in ophthalmology, radiology, orthopedics and anesthesiology.

Researchers also analyzed patterns in query purpose and medical topic area. Most queries related to treatment and management decisions rather than diagnosis, and clinicians frequently sought information outside their primary specialty.

By providing one of the first large-scale views of how clinicians use a clinical AI platform in practice, the study may help inform future efforts to evaluate and integrate AI tools in clinical medicine.

Published in JAMA on October 15, 2026 | Read the paper: “Clinician Use of an Artificial Intelligence–Enabled Clinical Information Platform”

Summary reviewed by: Vishal Patel, MD, MPH, lead author

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Journal

JAMA

DOI

10.1001/jama.2026.21868

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Clinician Use of an Artificial Intelligence–Enabled Clinical Information Platform

Article Publication Date

15-Oct-2026

COI Statement

Dr. Patel reported receiving grant support from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (F32EB040202) of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Finalyson reported being a salaried employee of OpenEvidence, which provided data and contributed to the analysis for the study, during the conduct of the study. Dr. Liu-Haas reported receiving personal fees from Accompany Health for consulting outside the submitted work. Dr. Ray reported receiving personal fees from OpenEvidence as a full-time employee outside the submitted work. Dr. Zack reported being the chief medical officer of OpenEvidence during the conduct of the study. Dr. Jena reported receiving personal fees from Analysis Group, Freakonomics, MD, DoubleDay Books, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harry Walker Agency outside the submitted work and serving as an unpaid board member for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). No other disclosures were reported.

 

NYU researchers are building AI to piece together broken archaeological finds

Schmidt Sciences–backed project will reassemble fragments of stone tools, pottery and bones that have sat unmatched in collections, and release the tools free to archaeologists

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

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A team of NYU engineers and archaeologists is working on open-source AI tools that piece together broken stone tools, pottery and bones and fill in what's missing, so that fragments sitting unmatched in collections can become evidence about how people in the past lived.

The project, "Fragmented Legacy: Turning Broken 3D Materials into Archaeological Interpretations," includes partners at the University of Tübingen and is supported by a three-year grant from Schmidt Sciences. It is one of 19 projects selected for this year's Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) awards.

The problem it targets is basic to archaeology. Stone tools, pottery, animal bones and human skeletal remains are often excavated broken, and putting the fragments back together, a process called refitting, is slow enough that most collections are never systematically refitted. Reported success rates run from about 1 percent for ceramics to between 4 and 26 percent for bones.

Chen Feng, Institute Associate Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and founding co-director of the NYU Center for Robotics and Embodied Intelligence (CREO), leads the project with Jing Zhang, a CREO Faculty Fellow.

They are joined by Radu Iovita and Scott Williams, associate professor and professor, respectively, in NYU’s Department of Anthropology, and Raiko Krauß, Professor of Central and Southeast European Prehistory at the University of Tübingen.

Collaborators include Leiden University, Arizona State University, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

"My lab teaches machines to understand 3D shapes in the real world, where things are messy and incomplete," said Feng. "Broken archaeological material is one of the hardest versions of that problem. The pieces are worn, many are missing, and there's no picture on the box. Our job is to build AI that can reason through that uncertainty, and our archaeology colleagues tell us whether the answers make sense."

Refitting matters because a single match between two fragments can carry a lot of information.

If a stone flake found in one part of a site fits back onto a core found in another, researchers learn how people moved through that space, how tools were made step by step, or whether the site's layers were disturbed after the fact. Animal bones that refit can show how an animal was butchered and how meat was shared, and human fossil refits can reveal important anatomical features.

Without refits, many of those questions go unanswered.

The team will start by building a collection of at least 100,000 real and digitally simulated broken objects, pairing 3D models with photographs, descriptions and catalog data, with simulated breaks that follow how stone, clay and bone actually fracture.

The researchers will then develop AI models that work out where each fragment belongs while generating a plausible version of the complete object, and that reason across shape, images and text so archaeological knowledge can rule out unlikely reconstructions.

Archaeologists will stay in the loop throughout, comparing competing reconstructions and teaching the system which ones hold up.

“Refitting is fun, but we rarely have time to do it right. In museums, one can often only look at one drawer at a time, so it’s impossible to lay out an entire collection at once,” said Iovita. “Refitting objects between sites to show direct relationships between them has only ever been done twice. My dream is to use AI to do this on a large scale – it will revolutionize the field!”

The project grew out of a collaboration between Feng’s AI4CE Lab and Iovita’s lab that began about four years ago with LUWA, which used AI to classify microscopic wear on stone tools. Zhang, then a postdoctoral researcher working in both labs, connected the two groups.

In 2024, Zhang asked Iovita about archaeology’s most pressing technical problem, and Iovita pointed to refitting. That led to GARF, which reassembles broken objects, and CRAG, which also fills in missing pieces, and laid the groundwork for the HAVI award.

“Archaeologists are like Sherlock Holmes, piecing together clues to understand the past,” said Zhang. “We want Fragmented Legacy to be their Watson. It can match fragments and suggest possible reconstructions, so researchers have more time to interpret the evidence and ask new questions.”

All datasets, model weights and benchmarks from the project will be released under permissive open-source licenses, so university researchers and cultural resource management (CRM) firms, which carry out much of the archaeological work required ahead of construction in the U.S. and abroad, can use them directly. The team expects the methods to be useful beyond archaeology, in other scientific fields and in practical repair and restoration.

The award follows Schmidt Sciences' August announcement that NYU Tandon’s Dharik Mallapragada is part of one of the projects funded through its new Decarbonization and Energy Virtual Institute, which will develop faster computer models of how heavy industry can cut carbon emissions.

 

Mount Sinai receives $3.3 million NIH grant to bring chronic disease care to people’s doorsteps in Ghana

The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine

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New York, NY (October 15, 2026)—Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have received a $3.3 million, five-year grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to test an innovative community-based primary care model for high blood pressure in rural Ghana. The approach will bring this care from distant health centers to patients’ homes and villages.

The funds will be shared between Mount Sinai and the Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC) in Ghana. The project will be led by longtime collaborators David Heller, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Global Health and Health System Design, and Medicine (General Internal Medicine), at the Icahn School of Medicine, and Raymond Aborigo, PhD, MPH, Chief Health Research Officer at NHRC, a research center of the Ghana Health Service.

“My Ghanaian colleagues and I believe that primary care for chronic diseases can be brought out of the clinic, to people’s doorsteps, where the care will be less costly and more impactful because it will prevent and control these diseases early,” says Dr. Heller, who also co-leads the Ghana Partnership at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine. “This funding will make it possible to test that model, potentially revolutionizing the way hypertension care is delivered, not only in Ghana, but in communities globally.”

In a pilot study in rural Ghana, the team showed that community-based nurses and community health workers can successfully address high blood pressure with counseling and medication. In the 90-day trial, among 37 people with hypertension, 86 percent achieved normal blood pressure. The research team will now test this approach in 36 communities across Northern Ghana.

Dr. Heller and Dr. Aborigo will lead a team from Mount Sinai, NHRC, York University in Toronto, and New York University to conduct a randomized clinical trial among 504 adults with high blood pressure. The study will test whether providing community-based hypertension care through an existing public primary health care program produces health outcomes that are as good as or better than clinic-based care, which is often far away and hard to access. The trial will start in fall 2027 and run for three years.

“Up until now, community-based care in Ghana has successfully improved prenatal care and addressed infectious diseases like malaria and pneumonia in children. Now we want to expand the model to include high blood pressure, one of the deadliest chronic diseases in the world,” Dr. Aborigo explains. “When a nurse, trusted by the people, goes door to door to check on the babies, she should also check their parents’ blood pressure, and their grandparents’, and be able to refer them for treatment close to home. We need to keep people healthy across the entire lifespan.”

The project will also explore the cost-effectiveness of community-based chronic disease care and actively engage policymakers and the community to ensure the work is culturally sensitive and can inform national policy. A community stakeholder board will advise throughout the study, and the team will share the results widely.

The Arnhold Institute for Global Health’s Ghana Partnership is a multidisciplinary collaboration among more than 60 faculty throughout the Mount Sinai Health System and the Ghana Health Service. It focuses on collaborative research to strengthen the health systems serving some of the hardest-to-reach communities in rural Ghana.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.

As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.

Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube. To listen to news and stories from Mount Sinai, visit the Mount Sinai Podcast Network.

 

New USDA-funded research project to explore the impact of short-term drought on lawns

Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Science Amy Churchill receives USDA grant to fund research project

Binghamton University

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Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Science Amber (Amy) Churchill in the Pasture and Lawn Enhanced Diversity Global-change Experiment (PLEDGE), located in Nuthatch Hollow.

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Credit: Binghamton University, State University of New York

Climate change has caused sudden and unexpected shifts in weather, including dry spells. What does that mean for your lawn, and are there ways to keep it green without overusing water and fertilizer? 

Enter the Pasture and Lawn Enhanced Diversity Global-change Experiment (PLEDGE) at Nuthatch Hollow, the outdoor laboratory and wildlife sanctuary gifted to Binghamton University, State University of New York by Robert F. Schumann and the Schumann family. Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Science Amber (Amy) Churchill recently received a $298,476 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to expand ongoing research at the PLEDGE site by exploring how drought affects lawn performance from year to year.

“This grant will allow us to maintain our existing field site as a long-term project and examine new directions in focus, including experimental manipulation of water availability for our lawns,” Churchill explained. “Considering that lawns are a persisting ecosystem, how well things are going years after establishment is as ecologically important as during the initial construction phase.”

Established in the spring of 2024, PLEDGE’s overarching goal is to study the functional effects of plant diversity on lawns and how lawns respond to external factors such as fertilization. 

The site’s 30 enhanced functional diversity lawns contain one to three species: tall fescue, a common grass that most area homeowners have in their yards; white clover, a legume; and creeping thyme, a short evergreen that grows year-round and flowers almost continuously during the summer months. Researchers are also working with additional native species in the greenhouse, which could lead to future recommendations on what to plant in your lawn.

The 30 plots are divided into three groups of 10, based on the species they contain. In the new research, each lawn will be divided into three sections, with specific groups receiving different amounts of water. The first year will focus on quantifying the variation within each lawn; research into the effects of drought will take place during the second year.

“Here in New York, short-term drought, especially high intensity ‘pulse’ droughts with very low water over short intervals that are often combined with high temperatures, are generally predicted to become more common, especially during summer months,” Churchill said. “We are especially looking to understand how these changes in water availability will impact some of the ways that we use and rely on lawns, including things like lawn greenness and plant density, which can affect aesthetic value and recreational use.”

Almost 2% of the continental U.S. is cultivated with turf species, including lawns, public parks and golf courses. These human-created ecosystems account for 30 to 60% of potable water use for irrigation and often require management with fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to maintain their lush green appearance.

As part of the project, researchers will host discussions on managing biodiversity in urban spaces and how this management can support ecosystem stability under changing environmental conditions. These discussions aren’t only for fellow researchers interested in the topic, but also members of the surrounding community, who are invited to learn new ways to manage their own backyards.

“Receiving support for this work through the USDA highlights the commitment that Binghamton University places on community-engaged research,” Churchill said.

 

Beyond national parks: Researchers explore a broader future for conservation

University of Exeter

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As governments prepare to gather in Armenia for the UN biodiversity summit, researchers are highlighting a conservation approach that recognises places where nature thrives beyond conventional protected areas.

Known as “other effective area-based conservation measures”, or OECMs, these areas sustain biodiversity over the long term, even when conservation is not their primary purpose. They could help countries meet the global “30 by 30” target to conserve at least 30% of land, inland waters, coastal areas and oceans by 2030.

Researchers from the University of Exeter, Jersey International Centre for Advanced Studies, the University of Kent, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Gibraltar have reviewed the emerging role of OECMs in global conservation policy. Their analysis explores how these areas can support biodiversity while recognising local stewardship, livelihoods and cultural values.

Lead author Catherine Wensink, Executive Director, UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum, and a PhD researcher at the University of Exeter and Jersey International Centre for Advanced Studies, said: “Countries have not waited for the global debate on OECMs to be settled; they have already started putting them into practice. What has been fascinating about this research is tracing their development through a rapidly evolving global debate and down to the practical realities of a small, biodiverse Caribbean island. It shows how a global conservation idea can look very different in the places where it actually has to work.”

The review examines the conditions needed for OECMs to deliver lasting benefits, including effective governance, respect for rights and resilience to climate change.

The findings are relevant to COP17 – the next meeting of governments under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which will take place from 19-30 October in Yerevan, Armenia. The summit will assess progress towards global biodiversity goals, including the contribution of protected areas and OECMs.

OECMs broaden the range of places that can be recognised for their contribution to conservation. Landscapes and waters managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, farmers and private landowners may sustain important biodiversity alongside other activities. The review considers settings as varied as sacred grounds, pastoral lands, orchards and surf breaks, alongside less familiar environments such as underground systems and thermal vents.

These places do not qualify simply because they contain wildlife or have cultural importance. Recognition must be supported by effective governance and management that deliver sustained biodiversity benefits.

The researchers caution that recognising an area as an OECM is only a starting point. Without clear responsibilities, adequate support and evidence of ecological outcomes, recognition risks becoming a paper promise. Implementation must also respect the rights and decision-making authority of the people who govern and use these places.

For co-author Professor Julia E. Fa, of Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Gibraltar, the key is translating recognition into lasting benefits: “OECMs offer an opportunity to recognise conservation rooted in people’s everyday relationships with land and water. But recognition must come with support for the people responsible for these places, respect for their rights, and evidence that biodiversity is being sustained. Their success will depend on what happens on the ground: who makes decisions, how livelihoods are supported, and whether management can adapt as conditions change.”

The review also examines the geopolitical implications of OECMs and the growing role of technologies for monitoring ecosystems and species. It highlights the importance of assessing whether conservation benefits can persist as climate change alters habitats and wildlife distribution.

The research offers a practical basis for widening conservation efforts: identify places already sustaining biodiversity, understand the conditions that make this possible, and support their stewards. Carefully implemented, OECMs could help countries advance global conservation goals while strengthening the relationships between people and the places on which they depend.

The review, published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, is entitled: “Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) in Global Area-Based Conservation.”

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Journal

Annual Review of Environment and Resources

DOI

10.1146/annurev-environ-121124-060839.

Article Title

Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) in Global Area-Based Conservation.

Article Publication Date

15-Oct-2026

 

Study: Food prescription programs for food-insecure, older adults work best when fresh food is delivered to their door

University at Buffalo

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The study found that home delivery of fresh produce dramatically improved redemption of food prescription programs.

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Credit: Douglas Levere/University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. – People who eat fresh food are healthier than those who don’t. That simple fact is the basis of food prescription programs that make fruits, vegetables and other foods free for people who are food insecure.

But just giving people vouchers to redeem for fresh produce isn’t enough. Research shows that only 9% to 18% of those who receive such vouchers actually use them.

A new study by University at Buffalo researchers has found that when fresh produce is delivered directly to participants’ homes, those numbers jump to nearly 90%. The findings were published last month in Frontiers in Public Health.

“The problem historically with food prescription programs is that people get the vouchers but don’t redeem them,” says Lucia A. Leone, PhD, corresponding author and associate professor of community health and health behavior in the School of Public Health and Health Professions at UB. “Our goal was to test different versions of home delivery to ideally boost redemption and compare to what has been the standard approach, which was to give people vouchers to redeem at a mobile market.”

Over 65 and food insecure

The 12-week, randomized controlled study consisted of two intervention arms and a standard-of-care arm. A total of 67 adults, mostly African-Americans, over the age of 65, who had indicated that they have at times been food insecure were recruited from primary care clinics at Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) in Buffalo.

A third of participants received weekly fresh produce boxes delivered to their homes via FreshFix, a local food delivery company co-founded by Leone. Participants were able to customize their produce if they chose to. Another third received home deliveries of healthy meal kits, which included produce plus ingredients needed to make three meals with that produce. Each week they could choose from five to six different meal kit options.

In the standard-of-care arm, participants received vouchers that they could redeem at the ECMC mobile market or at one of several FeedMore Western New York markets across Buffalo.

Participation levels in traditional programs may be low, Leone explained, because people lack the transportation required to get to the place where vouchers can be redeemed, or because they don’t want to be seen as needing assistance. The markets where people can redeem their food prescription vouchers often operate out of food pantries, which recipients may feel are stigmatizing.

“We wanted to overcome those barriers,” says Leone. “We wanted to find out, does delivery improve redemption of food prescriptions? Does having a meal kit mean that people would use more produce?”

For both interventions, redemption (meaning preparation and consumption of the delivered produce) reached 89.2%, while the control arm, where people had to go to the mobile market to redeem their produce, was just 28.3%.

Leone says redemption fell short of 100% when participants were out of town or if they felt they had sufficient food on hand. She noted that the addition of meal kits didn’t improve the use of the produce probably because these people, all over 65, knew how to use the produce so the meal kit didn’t make a difference in cooking, but the overall greater quantity of food did help improve food security.

High marks for the program – and its driver

Participants in both intervention arms scored the program higher than 9 out of 10. They definitely said they would recommend the program to others.

Participants also made positive comments about the FreshFix delivery driver, Charles Humphrey, whom Leone describes as a “wonderful, personable person” who made all deliveries throughout the study.

“That’s something we see across the research,” she says, “the connection with one particular person. If they’re a good ambassador, it can really improve the success of the program.” Humphrey, a FreshFix community outreach coordinator, has previous experience working at mobile markets including the UB Veggie Van.

The UB study was unique because getting a food delivery was the default, Leone explains. “We didn’t require customers to do anything to redeem their prescription, but they could customize their order if desired” says Leone, “two components that may have contributed to its success. In a lot of delivery programs, everybody gets the same food, so we were really lucky to be able to partner with FreshFix so that we could do delivery and customization. It’s always better if it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach and can be tailored to specific populations.”

She adds that large programs, like those offered through Medicaid, for example, may find it harder to customize for specific populations.

Co-authors on the study are: Anne Lally Mathiebe, PhD, assistant director in UB’s Community Health Interventions Lab in the School of Public Health and Health Professions; Jennifer A. Stoll, PhD, research assistant professor, the late Jill Tirabassi, MD, both of the Department of Family Medicine; and Rocco A. Paluch, research coordinator in the Department of Pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

The study was funded by the American Heart Association. Preliminary work for this research was supported by UB’s Civic Engagement Research Fund. Partners on the research were FreshFix, FeedMore WNY, and the UB Veggie Van.

Leone and colleagues have now been funded by the National Institutes of Health to conduct a similar study with a more challenging population: families on Medicaid experiencing food insecurity with children ages 2-6. The UB researchers will conduct this study in partnership with local pediatric practices. 

 

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Journal

Frontiers in Public Health

DOI

10.3389/fpubh.2026.1855988

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

A randomized controlled study comparing three food prescription programs for older adults: program design, implementation, and utilization