AI Meets Official Guidance: LA County DPH and OpenEvidence Launch Physician Support Tool
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The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) and OpenEvidence, an AI-powered clinical decision support platform, have announced a collaboration to help physicians quickly find official L.A. County Public Health resources when searching for clinical information.
Under this new partnership, when physicians in L.A. County search the platform for selected public health topics, OpenEvidence will display related L.A.-specific messages from Public Health. The messages connect clinicians to local public health resources and health alerts related to reportable diseases, outbreaks and other time-sensitive public health issues.
“Physicians often need local public health guidance at the same moment they are working through a clinical challenge,” said Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “This collaboration helps bring L.A. County resources closer to that decision point. A search about measles, TB or any other reportable condition should not end only with general information but connect to the next step. We want that action to be easy to find and easy to take.”
“Local health departments produce some of the most actionable information in the country, and while they spend a tremendous amount of time and resources developing the right guidance, they often have to dedicate considerable extra effort to bring that guidance to the attention of clinicians,” said Travis Zack, MD, PhD, chief medical officer at OpenEvidence. “Working with L.A. County allows us to add practical help when physicians need it, without requiring additional searching.”
The effort builds on OpenEvidence’s experience reaching physicians with public health messaging in New York City in partnership with its Department of Health, Mental Health, and Hygiene. The collaboration comes as Los Angeles County continues to strengthen routine and emergency public health readiness across a large and complex healthcare landscape.
L.A. County DPH and OpenEvidence plan to evaluate the effort to refine future messages and identify additional areas where local public health guidance can be made easier for physicians to find.
Information for this article was sourced from the L.A. County Department of Public Health and OpenEvidence.
