Thursday, August 6, 2026

County Health Alerts Will Reach Altadena Doctors Through an AI Search Tool

Los Angeles County is routing its guidance into a clinical platform that NBC News reports nearly two-thirds of U.S. physicians use; Pasadena maintains a separate health jurisdiction

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health will begin surfacing county health alerts and links to local public health resources for physicians who use OpenEvidence, an AI-powered clinical decision support platform, under a collaboration the department and the company announced July 23.

Under the arrangement, when a physician in Los Angeles County Public Health Dept.’s jurisdiction searches the platform on selected public health topics, OpenEvidence will display county messages linking to local resources and alerts on reportable diseases, outbreaks and other time-sensitive public health issues, according to the announcement, which the two parties distributed as a press release.

In Altadena and Sierra Madre, the county department is the controlling local health authority — the agency that issues disease alerts and receives reportable-condition notices from clinicians.

Pasadena is somewhat different; although it is located in LA County, it maintains its own health department. Pasadena is one of only three cities in California that maintain an independent local health jurisdiction, and the county department does not have jurisdiction inside the city, according to the Pasadena Public Health Department and the LA County Healthcare Coalition. Neither the county announcement nor the company’s release states how the messaging treats physicians practicing within Pasadena’s separate jurisdiction.

“Physicians often need local public health guidance at the same moment they are working through a clinical challenge,” Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said in the announcement. “This collaboration helps bring LA County resources closer to that decision point. A search about measles, TB, or any other reportable condition should not end only with general information but connect to the next step.”

Travis Zack, chief medical officer at OpenEvidence, said in the same announcement that local health departments produce some of the most actionable information in the country but often have to dedicate considerable extra effort to bring that guidance to clinicians’ attention.

“Working with LA County allows us to add practical help when physicians need it, without requiring additional searching,” he said.

The effort builds on OpenEvidence’s earlier work delivering public health messaging to physicians in partnership with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, according to the announcement.

OpenEvidence, headquartered in Miami, limits full access to health care professionals who verify their credentials, generally through a National Provider Identifier. The company describes itself as the most widely used clinical decision support platform among U.S. clinicians. NBC News reported in May that nearly two-thirds of U.S. physicians use the tool, The company raised $250 million in January in a round led by Thrive Capital and DST, doubling its valuation to $12 billion, according to CNBC.

The county department and the company said they plan to evaluate the effort, refine future messages and identify additional areas where local public health guidance can be made easier for physicians to find. The announcement did not say when that evaluation would take place.