AskMed
AskMed is our pick for medical literature search because it searches PubMed, Cochrane and major journals and writes a cited answer in one step. Filters keep only the study types you want.
| Journals | PubMed, PubMed Central, Cochrane Library, NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA, The BMJ and 11 specialty journals |
|---|---|
| Guidelines | NICE, USPSTF, WHO, CDC, ECDC, ESC, KDIGO, GINA, GOLD, IDSA, ACOG and more |
| Drug labels | FDA and DailyMed |
| Sources per answer | 8 by default, any number from 3 to 12 |
| Citations | A link after every claim, to the exact page |
| Study filters | Systematic reviews and meta-analyses, review articles, clinical trials, other studies |
| Research Mode | Reads the full text of the most relevant result |
| Your files | Attach a PDF or image to a question |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Android, web |
How do the other tools compare?
Six other tools are worth comparing with AskMed for medical literature search: PubMed, Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar, Scite and OpenEvidence. They do different jobs. PubMed is the search engine itself, with more than 40 million citations from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books, and it returns a list of articles rather than a written answer. Elicit, Consensus and Semantic Scholar search very large academic databases that cover every field of science, from 138 million papers in Elicit to over 400 million scholarly sources in Consensus. Scite shows how later papers have cited a study. OpenEvidence answers clinical questions for verified healthcare professionals, and its App Store page says an NPI is required. AskMed searches a fixed list of medical journals, guidelines and drug labels and cites every claim, so the answer is already narrowed to medicine. The table shows what each tool searches and what it is best for.
| Tool | What it searches | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| AskMed | Medical journals, Cochrane, guidelines, drug labels and references | A cited answer from medical sources, with study-type filters |
| PubMed | 40M+ citations from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books | Complete, reproducible searches with MeSH and filters |
| Elicit | 138M+ papers from Semantic Scholar, PubMed and OpenAlex, plus ClinicalTrials.gov | Screening papers and extracting data for a review |
| Consensus | 400M+ scholarly sources; Medical Mode narrows to about 8 million papers and guidelines | Seeing how far studies agree on a yes/no question |
| Semantic Scholar | 200M+ academic papers in all fields | Browsing a topic and following citations |
| Scite | 1.6B+ citation statements | Checking whether later research supported or contrasted a paper |
| OpenEvidence | 35M+ peer-reviewed papers, 300+ journals, FDA and CDC | Clinical questions for verified healthcare professionals |
The six tools in detail
PubMed, Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar, Scite and OpenEvidence each solve a different part of a literature search, so the right choice depends on the task in front of you. A resident preparing a journal club needs the key trials and a summary of what they found. A researcher starting a systematic review needs a complete, documented search and help screening thousands of abstracts. A clinician between patients needs a short answer with sources that can be opened and checked. The notes below say what each tool does, using the numbers each company states on its own website or App Store page as of 3 November 2026. Corpus sizes are not directly comparable, because PubMed counts biomedical citations while Elicit, Consensus and Semantic Scholar count papers from every academic field. For how AskMed picks and cites its sources, see How AskMed answers.
PubMed
PubMed, from the US National Library of Medicine, holds more than 40 million citations. Its default sort, Best Match, weights each citation by how many of your terms it contains and where, gives recent articles a little more weight, then re-ranks the top results with a machine-learning model. PubMed maps your words to MeSH terms automatically and has filters for article types such as Systematic Review and Randomized Controlled Trial. It gives you citations and abstracts, not a written summary.
Elicit
Elicit searches over 138 million papers from Semantic Scholar, PubMed and OpenAlex, and can search US trials on ClinicalTrials.gov. Its systematic review workflow automates screening and data extraction, and its reports cite claims sentence by sentence. It suits researchers building evidence tables.
Consensus
Consensus searches over 400 million scholarly sources drawn from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, its own crawl and publisher partners. The Consensus Meter shows how far studies agree on a yes/no question. Medical Mode limits a search to about 8 million papers and guidelines, including roughly 50,000 clinical guidelines, from the top 1,000 medical journals.
Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is run by Ai2, the Allen Institute for AI, and indexes over 200 million academic papers. Its TLDRs, one-sentence AI summaries of a paper's main objective and results, cover nearly 60 million papers in computer science, biology and medicine.
Scite
Scite's Smart Citations classify each citation statement as supporting, contrasting or mentioning, across more than 1.6 billion of them. Before you lean on a single trial, Scite shows whether later studies backed it up or disputed it.
OpenEvidence
OpenEvidence answers clinical questions with every claim cited, from more than 35 million peer-reviewed papers, 300+ medical journals and FDA and CDC sources, and names NEJM, JAMA and Cochrane among its content partners. Users must verify their healthcare professional status first, and the App Store listing says an NPI is required.
How do you search the medical literature?
To search the medical literature well, turn your question into PICO, map each part to MeSH terms and free-text synonyms, combine them with Boolean operators, then filter by study design. PICO stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome. For example: in adults with type 2 diabetes (P), do SGLT2 inhibitors (I), compared with placebo (C), reduce hospitalisation for heart failure (O)? Each part becomes a block of search terms. In PubMed, MeSH terms are the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary, and a MeSH search automatically includes the narrower terms beneath it. Article type filters such as Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis and Randomized Controlled Trial then cut the results to the strongest designs. Start with systematic reviews and guidelines, because they have already gathered the trials, and go to single studies only when the reviews are missing or out of date. The steps below show the method on that example.
- Write the question as PICO. Leave the comparison out if there isn't one. Add the outcome to the search only when the results are too many, since abstracts don't always name every outcome.
- Find the MeSH terms. Look each concept up in the MeSH database:
"Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2"[Mesh],"Sodium-Glucose Transporter 2 Inhibitors"[Mesh],"Heart Failure"[Mesh]. Use[majr]to keep articles where the term is a major topic, and[mh:noexp]to stop PubMed adding narrower terms. - Add free-text synonyms. The newest articles may not have MeSH terms yet, so add words searched in titles and abstracts, such as
SGLT2[tiab] OR empagliflozin[tiab] OR dapagliflozin[tiab]. - Combine with OR and AND. Use OR within a concept and AND between concepts, and wrap each concept in brackets so PubMed reads them in the right order.
- Filter by study design. Tick Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis or Randomized Controlled Trial in the sidebar, or use Clinical Queries, which offers ready-made Therapy, Diagnosis, Etiology, Prognosis and Clinical Prediction Guides filters with a narrow or broad scope.
- Check the Cochrane Library. A Cochrane review may already answer an intervention question. For your own systematic review, search more than one database: Cochrane reviews of interventions search at least CENTRAL, MEDLINE and Embase.
- Save the exact search. Record every string, filter and date. PRISMA 2020 asks systematic reviews to report the full search strategy for each database.
AskMed does the first steps for you on a quick question: it writes the search query in precise medical terms rather than copying your wording, prefers guidelines, then systematic reviews and meta-analyses, then reviews and large trials, and favours sources from the last 10 years unless the topic is settled basic science.
What to look for in an AI literature search tool
A good AI tool for medical literature search should show you exactly where each claim comes from, search sources you would trust yourself, and let you control the type of evidence. Five checks separate the tools. First, citations should be links to the specific paper or page, attached to the sentence they support, not a reading list at the end. Second, the tool should say what it searches: a fixed list of medical journals and guidelines, or the whole academic literature across every field. Third, you should be able to filter by study design, so a systematic review isn't buried under case reports. Fourth, the tool should say plainly when it finds no good evidence instead of filling the gap. Fifth, clinical questions often need more than papers, so guidelines and drug labels matter too. The list below shows how AskMed meets each of the five checks, using the features of its standard answers.
- Claim-level citations. AskMed puts a link after each sentence or clause, using the exact address of the source it found, and is told never to invent studies, statistics or web addresses.
- A known list of sources. AskMed searches only its fixed list of journals, guideline bodies, drug label sites and medical references, not forums or social media.
- Study-type control. The source filters turn journals, guidelines, drug labels and references on or off, and choose among systematic reviews and meta-analyses, review articles, clinical trials and other studies.
- No source, no answer. If the search finds no usable medical source, AskMed says so and asks you to rephrase, rather than answering from memory.
- More than papers. One answer can cite a trial, the current NICE guideline and the FDA label together. When sources disagree, the answer says which evidence is stronger.
If you are choosing between AI medical search apps, see AskMed vs MediSearch. If you are studying for a licensing exam, see the best AI apps for USMLE.
Questions
Can an AI tool replace a systematic search for a systematic review?
An AI tool cannot replace the documented database search that a systematic review needs, but it can speed up the work around it. A systematic review must be reproducible, so the search strategy for each database is written out in full and reported, as PRISMA 2020 requires, and Cochrane reviews of interventions search at least MEDLINE, Embase and CENTRAL. AI tools help at other stages. Elicit automates screening and data extraction, Scite shows how a paper has been cited since, and AskMed gives a cited overview of a topic that helps you choose search terms and spot the key trials and guidelines before you write the strategy. Keep the formal search in the databases themselves, record every string and date, and use AI answers to scope the question and check what you found. Always read the full text of any study you include.
Does AskMed make up references?
AskMed cites only what its search found. Each link uses the exact address of a retrieved source, and an answer that cites no source at all is replaced with a message saying no medical source was found. Open the citation behind any claim you plan to use.
Which sources does AskMed search?
PubMed and PubMed Central, the Cochrane Library, NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA, The BMJ and 11 specialty journals; guidelines and agencies such as NICE, USPSTF, WHO, CDC, ESC, KDIGO and IDSA; FDA and DailyMed drug labels; and references such as StatPearls, the MSD Manuals and BMJ Best Practice.
Can I limit AskMed to systematic reviews or trials?
Yes. The source filters let you choose systematic reviews and meta-analyses, review articles, clinical trials or other studies, turn source types on or off, and set the number of sources from 3 to 12.
Does AskMed give drug doses?
No. AskMed never states medication doses. It covers what a drug is used for, how it works, side effects and monitoring, and exact dosing comes from the current prescribing information.
Which devices and languages does it work in?
iPhone, iPad, Android and the web, with one account on all of them. The app is available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Arabic.