By DoximityLearning Objectives
- Understand what Doximity Ask does and who can use it
- Explain how a free clinical AI tool fits a business that is paid by drug makers and hospitals
- Read benchmark claims from clinical AI vendors critically
What Is Doximity Ask?
Doximity Ask is a clinical AI assistant from Doximity, the professional network for American medical professionals. A clinician types a question in plain language and gets an answer that leads with the conclusion and then shows the supporting evidence, with citations back to guidelines, journal articles and drug labels. It also drafts the paperwork that surrounds care, such as prior authorization letters, insurance appeals and patient instructions.
It launched in 2023 as Doximity GPT, also called DoxGPT, and was renamed Doximity Ask in May 2026, when Doximity grouped it with its ambient note-taker and its calling tool as a Clinical AI Suite. Older articles and search results still use the old names.
What makes it unusual is distribution rather than technology. Doximity says its network includes more than 85 percent of US physicians, so Ask arrives inside an app many doctors already open. The company says nearly half of the more than 800,000 prescribers who used its workflow tools in the first quarter of 2026 also used its clinical AI.
⚠️Warning
Only verified US clinicians can use it. Access requires a Doximity account verified as a US physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant or medical student; it is not open to patients or to clinicians outside the United States. Doximity describes Ask as HIPAA-compliant, but it does not describe it as a cleared medical device. It is a reference and writing aid, and the clinician remains responsible for every decision.
📝Note
The company is in active litigation with its closest rival. In June 2025 OpenEvidence sued Doximity, alleging that Doximity employees used physicians' provider numbers to get into OpenEvidence's clinician-only tool and tried to extract its confidential instructions through prompt injection. Doximity disputes the claims and has filed counterclaims alleging misinformation and harassment. As of September 2026 the case was still in discovery, and none of the allegations on either side has been proven.
🎯Tip
Try Doximity Ask: sign in at doximity.com with a verified clinician account. The web app and the Doximity mobile app both include it.
Pricing
Ask costs nothing for eligible clinicians. Doximity's revenue comes mainly from pharmaceutical manufacturers and health systems, which buy marketing and hiring services aimed at its members, so the tools are paid for by the network rather than by the user.
- Ask, Scribe and Dialer included
- Physicians, NPs, PAs and medical students
- Doximity account verification required
- No public or paid access tier
- No published enterprise price
- Contact sales for organizational questions
Core Features
Evidence-First Answers
Doximity says every answer is built from a curated library of clinical guidelines, peer-reviewed literature, systematic reviews, regulatory drug labels, drug-interaction data and trial summaries. When it finds no admissible evidence, the intended behavior is to decline rather than guess.
Instant and Thinking Modes
A fast mode handles quick lookups, and a slower reasoning mode works through complex cases. Doximity describes the engine as a post-trained reasoning model paired with deterministic tools for calculations, but it has not said which base model it starts from.
PeerCheck Physician Review
PeerCheck, announced in December 2025, embeds physician review into answers. Reviewed answers show which physicians checked them and when. Eric Topol and former US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin are its co-editors-in-chief, and Doximity cited more than 11,000 physician reviewers by August 2026.
Built-In Drug Reference and Journal Access
Ask includes drug monographs covering dosing, interactions and side effects, and links to full-text journal articles and society guidelines.
Clinical Writing
Beyond questions, it drafts letters, appeals, patient education materials and summaries, with file attachments, dictation and saved projects.
The Pathway Acquisition
In July 2025 Doximity bought Pathway Medical, a Montreal startup that had built an AI clinical reference, for 26 million dollars in cash plus up to 37 million dollars in equity grants. Pathway's medical corpus and model were folded into Ask within weeks.
Strengths
- Free for eligible clinicians — no subscription, where most ambient scribes charge per clinician
- Distribution — it sits inside a network most US physicians already belong to
- Citations and deferral — answers show their sources, and the system is designed to decline when evidence is missing
- Physician review at scale — PeerCheck attaches named reviewers to answers
- Strong benchmark showing — Doximity says it was the top-performing US-based model in the NOHARM clinical safety benchmark from Stanford and Harvard researchers
Limitations and Considerations
- US clinicians only — patients and clinicians outside the United States cannot use it
- Not a cleared device — it is a reference and drafting aid, not a diagnostic system
- The benchmark lead is narrow — Doximity's first place applies to the study's real-world clinical sample, and a rival, AMBOSS, says its own tool ranked first overall on the same benchmark
- Omissions are the shared weakness — the same study found that most harmful errors across every tool tested were missing information rather than wrong facts
- Undisclosed base model — Doximity has not said which foundation model Ask is built on
- A business paid by drug makers — the tool is free because pharmaceutical marketing funds the network, a funding relationship worth knowing about for any clinical reference
- Pending litigation — the OpenEvidence lawsuit is unresolved
Best Use Cases
| Use Case | Why Doximity Ask Fits | Caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Quick point-of-care questions | Conclusion-first answers with citations | Open the sources before acting |
| Prior authorizations and appeals | Drafts payer letters from clinical details | Check every clinical fact in the draft |
| Drug dosing and interactions | Built-in drug reference | Confirm against the label for the patient |
| Patient education materials | Plain-language drafts in minutes | Review for accuracy and reading level |
| Trainee learning | Free for medical students | Not a substitute for supervised teaching |
How It Compares
OpenEvidence is the closest peer: also free to verified clinicians and also built around cited answers, but made by a company that started as an AI product rather than a network. Glass Health focuses on differential diagnosis and care plans. Doximity's advantage is reach, and its bet is that a clinician who already uses its network will ask their questions there too.
Key Takeaways
- Doximity Ask is a free clinical AI assistant for verified US clinicians, renamed from Doximity GPT in May 2026
- It answers with citations, declines when evidence is missing, and drafts clinical paperwork
- Doximity bought Pathway Medical in July 2025 and added physician review through PeerCheck in December 2025
- Its benchmark lead in NOHARM covers one slice of the study, and a rival claims first place overall
- It is free because drug makers and hospitals pay Doximity to reach its members, and the company is in unresolved litigation with OpenEvidence
