A health system stopped OpenEvidence after a doctor stored records
Free chatbots for doctors are in wide use, and one health system stopped access to one of them.
In 2026, Monument Health, a health system in South Dakota and Wyoming, stopped access to OpenEvidence, a free AI tool for doctor questions. Patrick Woodard, its chief information officer, tells that one doctor stored more than 100 patient records in the tool. He told the doctor that this must end.
What happened
Woodard tells that some clinicians objected to the stop. One was a heavy user. This doctor gave patient records to the tool to help make medical decisions.
Why doctors use them
Hundreds of thousands of doctors use free chatbots such as OpenEvidence, Doximity Ask and ChatGPT for Clinicians. The tools tell that they obey HIPAA, the US law on health data privacy law. After a user signs an agreement, he can share protected patient data with the tool.
What is not known
A paywall cuts the source text. It gives no number of health systems that stop these tools. Its headline tells that health systems can stop the tools or get them. The source does not tell what Monument Health does next.
Insight: A privacy promise can lead staff to share more data
The tools tell that they obey the US privacy law, and this is a cause of their use. In this story, that promise was adjacent to a doctor who stored more than 100 records. This reads as a distance between what a vendor promises and what a hospital approved, and the hospital carries the risk. Leaders must check use in their own teams, not only the vendor promise.
Sources
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