Best AI for Pulmonology: Cited Answers on the Lungs

Which AI tools answer pulmonology questions?

This guide compares the AI tools that pulmonologists, respiratory residents, ICU nurses and students weigh for lung questions, and each one does a different job. AskMed is an AI medical reference that answers questions on asthma, COPD, pulmonary embolism, pleural disease, interstitial lung disease and sleep apnea from journals, guidelines and drug labels, with a link after every claim, for anyone in medicine in any country. OpenEvidence is a clinical AI search engine for verified healthcare professionals; its App Store listing says an NPI is required and lists GINA among its content agreements. UpToDate Expert AI is the AI companion to the UpToDate clinical reference and needs an UpToDate subscription with Expert AI enabled. ChatGPT is OpenAI's general chatbot. AI scribes and software that reads chest images or sleep study recordings are different categories and are left out. The table shows what each tool is, where its answers come from and who can use it.

OpenEvidence

OpenEvidence describes itself as a clinical decision support platform and medical search engine for healthcare professionals. Its US App Store listing names NEJM, JAMA and its 11 specialty journals, NCCN, Nature, the Cochrane Library and Wiley as official partners, and lists content agreements and collaborations with medical societies, GINA among them. The listing marks an NPI as required, says users must verify their healthcare professional status, and says the app contains advertising. OpenEvidence's Terms of Use say the service is not available in the European Union, the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, so respiratory teams there need another tool. AskMed vs OpenEvidence compares the two in detail.

UpToDate Expert AI

UpToDate Expert AI is an AI-powered companion to the UpToDate clinical reference. Its App Store listing says answers are grounded in UpToDate content and linked to supporting sources, and that access needs an UpToDate subscription with Expert AI enabled, through an enterprise account or a personal subscription. It suits clinicians whose hospital already uses UpToDate. AskMed vs UpToDate Expert AI compares the two side by side.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is OpenAI's general AI chatbot, on the web, iPhone and Android. It helps to talk a mechanism through or draft an inhaler leaflet, but it is not limited to medical sources, so check any clinical claim against the guideline first. OpenAI also runs ChatGPT for Clinicians, which its help center opens to verified US clinicians with an NPI and a license check. Is ChatGPT accurate for medical questions? covers what studies found.

GINA and GOLD resources without AI chat

Many respiratory clinicians keep the guideline itself open next to their AI tool. GINA's website carries the 2026 GINA Strategy Report with a 2026 Summary Guide and a 2026 Severe Asthma Guide. GOLD's website carries the 2026 GOLD Report and a pocket guide that GOLD calls a quick-reference guide for physicians and nurses. GOLD has also partnered with AvoMD to offer its COPD treatment strategies in a digitized format on the GOLD website and inside electronic health records; GOLD's page does not describe a chat feature. These are for reading the guideline itself, which is also where an AI answer should lead you.

How does AskMed answer a pulmonology question?

AskMed answers a pulmonology question in four steps, and you can check each one. First, AskMed rewrites the question as a precise medical search query, and for management questions it adds "latest guideline update" so the newest guidance is found. Second, AskMed searches a fixed list of medical sites, never the open web or forums; for the lungs, that list includes GINA, GOLD, the American Thoracic Society's journals, NICE, the European Society of Cardiology, NEJM, The Lancet, PubMed, PubMed Central and the Cochrane Library, plus FDA and DailyMed drug labels. Third, AskMed ranks what it found: guidelines and health agencies first, then systematic reviews and meta-analyses, then reviews and references, then large trials, preferring work from the last 10 years. Fourth, an AI language model writes the answer with a link after every claim, gives the year of each guideline recommendation and says so when sources disagree. If no usable source turns up, AskMed says that instead of answering from memory.

Several joint respiratory guidelines sit on those sites: the 2022 ATS/ERS/JRS/ALAT guideline on idiopathic and progressive pulmonary fibrosis is in the American Thoracic Society's journal and on PubMed Central (doi), and the 2019 ESC guideline on acute pulmonary embolism, developed with the European Respiratory Society, is on the ESC website. For evidence questions such as "Do biologics reduce COPD exacerbations?", Research Mode reads the most relevant source in full before it writes the answer. How AskMed answers lists every source.

Can AI check an asthma or COPD answer against GINA and GOLD?

AI can check an asthma or COPD answer against GINA and GOLD when it searches those reports directly and names the edition it used, and AskMed does both: ginasthma.org and goldcopd.org are on AskMed's fixed list of guideline sources. Both groups publish a new report every year, so the year matters. On ginasthma.org, the current report is the 2026 GINA Strategy Report, Global Strategy for Asthma Management and Prevention, with a 2026 Summary Guide and a 2026 Severe Asthma Guide; its executive summary and key changes appeared in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in October 2026. On goldcopd.org, the current report when we checked was the 2026 GOLD Report, Global Strategy for Prevention, Diagnosis and Management of COPD. GOLD's list of 2026 key changes adjusted the criteria for the A, B and E groups, so that one moderate exacerbation is now the threshold to consider escalating treatment, and added a chapter on artificial intelligence in COPD.

• Asthma. How GINA assesses symptom control and future risk, which treatment step fits, inhaler technique and adherence checks, and when to refer for severe asthma, by drug class and without doses (GINA reports).
• COPD. Spirometry confirmation, which in the GOLD pocket guide needs a post-bronchodilator FEV1/FVC below 0.7, the A, B and E groups, initial versus follow-up treatment and exacerbation care (2026 GOLD Report).
• Pneumonia. Severity in community-acquired pneumonia with the CURB-65 calculator, which shows the 30-day mortality from the original study, and its comparison with the PSI.
• What GOLD says about AI. The 2026 pocket guide says AI can help in the diagnosis, assessment, management and prognosis of COPD, but comes with risks and limitations that need careful consideration before use in practice.

Can AI help work up a suspected pulmonary embolism?

AI can help work up a suspected pulmonary embolism by laying out the validated sequence of clinical probability, rule-out criteria, D-dimer and imaging, with a source for each step, but the bedside scores are quicker on a calculator. The current European guideline is the 2019 ESC guideline on acute pulmonary embolism, developed with the European Respiratory Society and published in the European Heart Journal; the ESC website lists no newer edition. AskMed searches the ESC website, the major journals and PubMed, so it can explain where the Wells score, the PERC rule and D-dimer testing fit, how risk is stratified once PE is confirmed, and which drug classes are used, without doses. On getaskmed.com, three calculators cover the scores: the Wells score for PE sorts patients into PE likely or unlikely, the PERC rule checks eight criteria in patients already judged low risk, and CURB-65 grades pneumonia, a common alternative diagnosis. Each calculator links its original paper by DOI.

PERC vs Wells and Wells vs Geneva explain how the scores differ. More lung calculators are on the way.

Can AI help with pleural effusion, interstitial lung disease and sleep apnea?

AI can help with pleural effusion, interstitial lung disease and sleep apnea by summarizing the workup each guideline sets out and linking the source, though none of the three can be diagnosed from a chat. For an undiagnosed unilateral effusion, the British Thoracic Society's 2023 Guideline for pleural disease, published in Thorax, covers effusion workup alongside pneumothorax, pleural infection and pleural malignancy, and Light's criteria from 1972 still separate exudates from transudates by comparing pleural fluid with serum protein and LDH. For fibrotic lung disease, the 2022 ATS/ERS/JRS/ALAT guideline updated idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and defined progressive pulmonary fibrosis. For sleep apnea, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine's 2017 diagnostic testing guideline recommends against diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea in adults with questionnaires or prediction tools alone, without polysomnography or home sleep apnea testing. AskMed cannot read a chest X-ray, a CT scan or a sleep study recording, so paste the report text and ask about that.

• Pleural effusion. Give the pleural fluid and serum values and ask "Exudate or transudate, and what next?" The BTS 2023 guideline and Light's 1972 paper are the sources to open.
• Interstitial lung disease. Paste the HRCT report's wording and the clinical picture, and ask how the 2022 guideline separates IPF from progressive pulmonary fibrosis.
• Sleep apnea. Ask which test fits: the AASM guideline recommends polysomnography rather than home testing in significant cardiorespiratory disease, neuromuscular weakness, awake hypoventilation, chronic opioid use, stroke or severe insomnia.
• Reports, not pictures. A radiology or sleep study report as a PDF gives AskMed text it can use; attachments explains what is read.

What should pulmonology residents, ICU nurses and students look for in an AI?

Pulmonology residents, respiratory and ICU nurses, respiratory therapists and students need an AI tool whose answers can be checked in seconds and that names the guideline edition it quotes. Four checks matter. First, citations: each claim should link to the guideline, trial or drug label behind it, not to a reading list at the end. Second, the edition: GINA and GOLD publish every year, so an answer should give the report year and say what changed. Third, device settings: AskMed treats ventilator settings, airway and tube sizes and chest drain suction pressures as device settings, not doses, so it gives their numbers when the sources state them, while drug doses are never given. Fourth, access: OpenEvidence's App Store listing says an NPI is required and its Terms exclude the UK, EU and EEA, and UpToDate Expert AI needs an UpToDate subscription with Expert AI enabled. AskMed needs no NPI or license, works in any country and carries no pharma advertising, on iPhone, iPad, Android and the web.

• Residents and fellows. Research Mode for journal club and for "what changed in this year's GOLD Report?" questions on rounds.
• ICU and respiratory nurses. Ventilator modes and alarms, chest drain care and what to monitor on a respiratory drug, with sources.
• Students. Paste an exam-style question with its options: the first sentence names the correct option and the answer explains why each other option is wrong.
• Pharmacists and researchers. Inhaler classes, device technique and interactions between named drugs without doses, and where trial evidence agrees or conflicts.

What are the limits of AI for pulmonology?

The main limit of AI for pulmonology is that an answer can only be as good as its sources and the question it was given, and respiratory guidance changes yearly, with new GINA and GOLD reports. AskMed searches a fixed list of medical sites, so a society guideline published elsewhere may reach AskMed only as a PubMed abstract, and every AskMed answer is written by an AI language model that can misread a source or leave something out; no person reviews it before you see it. Open the citation behind any sentence you act on and check that it covers the same patients, since evidence in stable COPD does not answer a question about an exacerbation in intensive care. AskMed reads text, not chest images, spirometry curves or sleep study recordings, and it gives no doses: take those from the current label or your local formulary. AskMed is for education and reference by healthcare professionals and students, not for emergencies or for patients' self-diagnosis.

• Check the source. Every AskMed claim has its own link, so you check one sentence against one page.
• Check the edition. A current GINA or GOLD report outweighs an older review, and AskMed gives the year of each recommendation.
• Report what looks wrong. Tap the thumbs down under an AskMed answer and pick a reason, such as Inaccurate or Sources don't match.

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