Meet the GP who engineered his own AI assistant: ‘My clinical work still pays better’

Long-time coder Dr Horst Herb is taking a break from clinical work to finish his 'passion' project.
Dr Horst Herb.

Dr Horst Herb is a rural GP by day.

His evenings, however, are dedicated to coding an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to assess studies before he decides to read them.

Having practised coding since 1978, the wave of junk research during COVID-19 — even in top journals like The Lancet — inspired him to draw up his own AI tool to help him find quality research to inform his medical practice.

Dr Herb has used the code to identify industry-funded studies with such weaknesses that, in his opinion, they should not have been published without major changes.