Who Fills The Gap After OpenEvidence Left Europe (Philippe Habets, EvidenceHunt)

OpenEvidence didn't leave Europe because of regulation alone — its ad-and-data business model never fit the European market.

When OpenEvidence, the $12B clinical AI search platform used daily by over 40% of US physicians, withdrew from the EU and UK in April 2026 citing the EU AI Act, European clinicians lost a tool many had quietly adopted. In this episode, Philippe Habets — physician-scientist and CEO of Amsterdam-based EvidenceHunt — argues the story is as much about business models as regulation: ad-funded clinical search and selling clinician search behaviour to pharma don't transfer to Europe, where clinicians distrust anything that looks commercial.

We also examine what AI evidence search is measurably doing inside hospitals: more uniform knowledge across teams, fewer junior-to-senior consultations, faster decisions — and the open question of whether that convergence improves care or narrows clinical thinking.

Guest: Philippe Habets, MD PhD, CEO & co-founder, EvidenceHunt (Amsterdam)

What the conversation covers:

- Why OpenEvidence left Europe: EU AI Act vs the ad-based and data-selling business model

- What hospitals did after OpenEvidence's exit — governance, procurement, shadow AI use

- How AI literature search changes clinical decision making and medical hierarchies

- Automation bias, tunnel vision and who is liable when AI is wrong

- Guardrails in practice: PII stripping, refusing clinical advice, reformulating case questions into research questions

- Why LLM answers differ between tools — and the omission problem in complex patients

- Living guidelines: automating systematic literature reviews and guideline updates (some protocols are 17 years old)

- Should patients have access to the same evidence tools as clinicians?

- EvidenceHunt vs OpenEvidence: data sources, GDPR, medical device regulation

- What won't change in healthcare AI in the next three years

Previous episode with Philippe Habets (2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8tC0B4NvpM

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

03:11 OpenEvidence leaves Europe: what it meant for a European competitor

04:31 No user spike — but hospitals started asking questions

06:54 What EvidenceHunt is: from PubMed frustration to systematic reviews

11:35 How clinicians actually adopt AI evidence tools

13:46 Uniform knowledge, fewer senior consultations: measured effects on clinical thinking

16:24 Tunnel vision, automation bias and the liability question

18:04 Guardrails in practice: PII stripping and refusing clinical advice

20:31 The omission problem: evidence is group statistics, patients are N of 1

23:26 The real reason OpenEvidence left: ads, data-selling and European distrust

29:03 Should patients have the same evidence tools as clinicians?

31:51 Why disclaimers aren't enough — safeguards must be enforced in the product

33:43 Living guidelines: automating updates for protocols up to 17 years old

40:00 The biggest product challenge: too many features, one clean interface

41:40 What won't change in healthcare AI in the next three years

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