AskMed vs Claude

What is Claude?

Claude is a general AI assistant made by Anthropic PBC, available on the web, iPhone, iPad and Android, and listed in the Productivity category of the App Store with the subtitle "AI assistant for life and work". Claude's store listing says Claude helps you "write, research, code, and tackle complex problems and hard questions", from emails and reports to debugging code. Claude can search the web: the Claude Help Center says Claude uses a search tool to ground its responses "with content from the live web", and that every response using web search includes citations. In January 2026, Anthropic introduced Claude for Healthcare, a set of tools for "healthcare providers, payers, and health tech companies", with connectors to the CMS Coverage Database, ICD-10 and the NPI Registry, and a PubMed connector that Anthropic names for HIPAA-compliant organizations on Claude for Enterprise. In the US, paid subscribers can also connect their own lab results and health records.

Anthropic's own help article on wrong answers says Claude can "occasionally produce responses that are incorrect or misleading", and that "Users should not rely on Claude as a singular source of truth and should carefully scrutinize any high-stakes advice given by Claude."

How do AskMed and Claude answer a medical question differently?

AskMed and Claude differ most in where a medical answer comes from. Claude answers from what its model learned in training and, when web search is on or Claude decides a search helps, from pages on the live web, with citations to the pages used; the Help Center describes no setting that limits the search to medical sources. AskMed searches before every answer, and only a fixed list of medical sources: PubMed and the Cochrane Library, journals such as NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA and The BMJ, guidelines from NICE, WHO, CDC, ESC, KDIGO and GINA, FDA and DailyMed drug labels, and references such as StatPearls and BMJ Best Practice. AskMed ranks guidelines first, then systematic reviews and meta-analyses, prefers sources from the last 10 years, and links each claim to the source's exact web address. If nothing usable turns up, AskMed shows a fixed reply asking you to rephrase rather than writing an answer from memory.

You can also shape the evidence: AskMed's source filters turn journals, guidelines, drug labels and references on or off, pick study types from systematic reviews to clinical trials, and set from 3 to 12 sources per answer, 8 by default. For a question that needs the literature, Research Mode reads up to 20 papers. More on each step is in how AskMed answers.

Where do drug facts come from?

AskMed takes drug facts from official drug labels, the prescribing information a regulator approved, while Anthropic's pages don't state which drug sources Claude uses; Claude's web search draws on whatever pages it finds. The label is the primary document for a medicine's indications, contraindications, boxed warnings, interactions and adverse reactions. AskMed reads FDA labels and DailyMed, and for local brand names AskMed also checks official drug registries from outside the US, such as the EMA, the UK's medicines.org.uk, Japan's PMDA, Health Canada, Australia's TGA and India's CDSCO, so a brand sold in Europe, the UK or Asia leads to the right label. Each drug claim links to the label itself, so a pharmacist checking an interaction or a nurse checking a side effect can open the source and confirm the wording. AskMed never states medication doses, dose calculations or titration schedules; a drug answer still covers uses, mechanism, options, monitoring, adjustment factors and safety, and exact amounts come from the current label.

Does Claude have exam prep for medical licensing exams?

Claude's App Store and Google Play listings and Anthropic's healthcare pages don't state any question banks for medical licensing exams, while AskMed includes Exam Prep for 10 of them. AskMed's question banks cover PLAB, USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK, the Philippine PLE, France's EDN, UKOMNAS, NEET-PG, Mexico's ENARM, Turkey's TUS, Ghana MDC and Israel MLE. Each bank is written in the language of its exam, every question comes with an explanation for every option, not only the right one, and timed mock exams of up to 40 questions let you practice under exam conditions. When a question raises something you don't know, you can ask AskMed in the same app and get an answer cited to journals, guidelines and drug labels, then go back to the bank. For a medical student, a resident or an international medical graduate, AskMed keeps exam practice and cited answers in one account. See the guides for USMLE, PLAB 1 and the PLE.

When should you use AskMed or Claude?

Use AskMed when the question is medical and the answer has to be checked: a guideline recommendation, a drug interaction, a contraindication, a diagnostic criterion, the evidence behind a treatment, or an exam question you got wrong. AskMed is built for that one job, for doctors, nurses, medical students, pharmacists and researchers, so every answer starts from a search of journals, guidelines and drug labels and every claim carries a link. Use Claude for the general work that Anthropic describes Claude being made for: drafting an email or a report, restructuring a document, writing or debugging code, or working through a problem outside medicine. Many clinicians and students will use both, one for general writing and one for medical reference. For any medical claim that will change a decision, start from a tool that shows you the source behind each sentence, and open that source before you act. AskMed works worldwide, with no US license or NPI needed, in seven languages.

How do you check an AI medical answer?

You can check an AI medical answer from AskMed, Claude or any other tool with the same five steps, and Anthropic's own Help Center tells Claude users to review cited sources because the original pages "may contain important context or details not included in Claude's synthesis". First, find the source behind the exact claim you plan to use; if there is none, treat the claim as unverified. Second, open the source and confirm it exists and says what the sentence says, for the same patients, since a trial in adults doesn't answer a question about children. Third, check the date, because guidance can change after a model was trained or after a page was written. Fourth, check whose guidance it is, since NICE, US and European guidelines can differ. Fifth, take drug doses from the current prescribing information or your local formulary, never from a chatbot. AskMed is built to make the first two steps quick, with a link after every claim.

1. Find the source behind the claim. One sentence, one link. An answer with no source for the claim you need is a starting point, not evidence.
2. Read what the source says. Make sure it supports the sentence for the same group of patients, not just the same topic.
3. Check the date. A current guideline outweighs an older review, and one small study is weaker than a meta-analysis.
4. Check whose guidance it is. Follow the guideline that applies where you practise.
5. Get doses from the label. Use the current prescribing information or your local formulary for amounts and schedules.

The studies behind these checks, from licensing exam scores to invented references, are in is ChatGPT accurate for medical questions?

Bottom line

For medical questions, AskMed is the stronger choice over Claude, because AskMed is built for that one job. Claude is a capable general AI assistant for life and work, with web search, citations when it searches, and healthcare connectors that Anthropic offers to providers, payers and health tech companies. AskMed is built for everyone in medicine (doctors, residents, medical students, nurses, pharmacists and researchers) and searches a fixed list of journals, guidelines and drug labels before every answer, with a citation after every claim. AskMed says so when it finds no usable source instead of answering from memory, lets you filter by source type and study type and choose 3 to 12 sources, reads official drug registries from outside the US for local brand names, gives no drug doses, and includes exam prep for 10 licensing exams. AskMed runs on iPhone, iPad, Android and the web with one account, in seven languages, with no US license or NPI needed.