Almanac Health launched its first product on 23 September 2026, and the pitch is not another medical chatbot. Founder Cyril Zakka announced it on X at 15:30 UTC: “One of the scarcest resources in healthcare is time. We’re building @almanac_health so physicians have more time to care for patients.” The product, Almanac Chat, introduces itself in its own onboarding as “The AI workspace for clinical work”, a place to ask clinical questions, work through patient cases, draft documents and run repeatable research tasks.
That puts Almanac Health in a crowded and sensitive market, where the difference between a useful tool and a liability is usually in the detail. We read the public pricing page, the seed-funding announcement, the two research papers the company grew out of, and the onboarding copy inside the web app itself. Our earlier piece on human doctors versus AI covers the wider debate this product lands in.
This article sets out what the workspace does, how its patient memory and Epic connection work, what it costs, what the research behind it shows, and what a hospital or practice should check before letting clinicians use it.
Table of contents
- What Almanac Health Launched on 23 September
- The Almanac Health Workspace, Feature by Feature
- Patient Workspaces and Memory in Almanac Health
- How Almanac Health Connects to Epic
- Controls for Clinicians and Administrators
- What Almanac Health Costs
- The Research Behind Almanac Health
- How Almanac Health Handles Evidence and Sources
- Who Is Behind Almanac Health
- Where Almanac Health Fits Among Clinical AI Tools
- What to Check Before Adopting Almanac Health
- Frequently Asked Questions About Almanac Health
- References
What Almanac Health Launched on 23 September
The launch was announced in a 93-second video from the founder, quoted by the company account with a single line: “Cat’s out of the bag!”
A workspace, not a single chatbot
The welcome tour in Almanac Chat opens with two promises. “Plan, draft, and iterate” says clinicians can “Work through cases, notes, plans, and next steps with AI that fits into your existing workflow.” “Ask clinical questions” promises “source-backed answers across the clinical tools and references you trust.” The first is a workspace; the second is the evidence tool most people expect.
Built for professionals only
Almanac Health restricts the product to licensed healthcare professionals in active practice and to medical students, residents and fellows in accredited programmes. Users attest that the product “is not intended to provide medical advice to patients or the general public”, and that they will use it “not as a substitute for my own independent clinical judgment.”
Invite-only at launch
The web app states plainly that “Almanac Chat is invite-only”. New users need an invite code or a share link from a colleague who already has access, which gives Almanac Health a controlled rollout while it scales.
Web and iOS
The product runs in the browser at almanac.chat and has an iOS app. Plans bought through the App Store are managed from the iOS app, a detail the web billing screens mention explicitly.
The Almanac Health Workspace, Feature by Feature
The onboarding tour describes five areas. Taken together they explain the “clinical and medical research tasks” in the launch headline.
Files and Library
Clinicians can “Add PDFs, images, notes, and more to any chat. Almanac can read, edit, compare, and track versions as you work.” A Library saves important references once so they can be @-mentioned in any later conversation, which suits a guideline or protocol that a team uses every week.
Voice, dictation and visits
Voice conversations use “the same workflows, skills, and plugins available in chat.” Clinicians can dictate into the composer, or use a /visit command “to capture an encounter with attached audio and transcript.” A custom vocabulary lets users add drug names and procedures so dictation recognises them.
Plugins and the EHR
A plugin store lets organisations “Connect approved plugins, including MCP tools and your EHR, so Almanac can help act across real systems with your approval.” MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is the open standard many AI tools now use to reach other software.
Skills for research and operations
Skills are “reusable playbooks for common workflows, from document review to clinical research and operational tasks.” This is the feature that turns Almanac Health from an answer engine into a research workspace, because a literature-review or chart-audit routine can be written once and rerun.
File creation
The workspace can “Generate polished documents and decks for grand rounds, case reports, protocols, patient education, and more.” That covers a large share of the non-clinical writing that takes up clinicians’ evenings.
| Area | What the app says it does | Typical clinical use |
|---|---|---|
| Clinical questions | Source-backed answers with citations | Checking a dose, guideline or differential |
| Files and Library | Read, edit, compare and version documents | Comparing two protocol versions |
| Voice and /visit | Dictation, spoken chat, encounter capture | Recording a consultation with transcript |
| Plugins | MCP tools and EHR, with approval | Pulling results from the record |
| Skills | Reusable playbooks | A repeatable literature review |
| File creation | Documents and decks | Grand rounds slides, case reports |
Patient Workspaces and Memory in Almanac Health
The most consequential design choice in Almanac Health is that patients get their own workspaces, with memory attached.
Memory that follows each patient
The app states that “Almanac remembers key facts about each patient in their workspace”, and that “Patient memories stay with each patient and can be reviewed from the patient’s summary menu.” Conversations about a patient therefore build on each other instead of starting from nothing.
Finding a patient
Patients are found by typing “an MRN, or a name and date of birth”. Archived conversations and patients stay searchable, and whole archives can be permanently deleted, which cannot be undone.
General memory, separately controlled
A second, user-level memory keeps “helpful details from your conversations” to personalise later ones. Saved memories remain while memory is switched off, and users can ask Almanac to forget something at any time.
Why it matters
Persistent patient memory is useful clinically and sensitive legally. A fact remembered about a patient is health data held by a vendor, and any organisation using Almanac Health needs to know where it is stored, who can see it and how long it lasts.
How Almanac Health Connects to Epic
The EHR connection is where a workspace becomes something that can act, and the app is specific about how it works.
Your own credentials, your organisation’s endpoint
The setup screen says: “Connect your EHR so Almanac can retrieve patient information and interact with it on your behalf. You sign in with your own Epic credentials at your organization’s FHIR endpoint, which your IT team can provide.”
Standard SMART on FHIR
Error messages in the app refer to Epic’s SMART configuration, token exchange and a JWK Set URL, which is the standard pattern for a third-party app authorising against Epic. That is reassuring for IT teams, because it uses the access model Epic already governs.
Team workspaces only
A personal workspace cannot connect an EHR; the app says so directly. EHR access therefore sits inside an organisation’s team workspace, under its admins.
Approval before action
The plugin store promises that Almanac can act across real systems “with your approval”. How that approval is presented for each action, such as an order, is the detail to test in a pilot.
Controls for Clinicians and Administrators
Almanac Health exposes more controls than most clinical AI tools, and they are worth setting deliberately rather than leaving at defaults.
Three permission levels
The app offers three agent modes, described in its own words below. Start with the most cautious and relax it only after a pilot.
Web source allow and block lists
Administrators can “use the allowed and blocked lists to control which websites Almanac can access”. The app itself recommends “starting with a small, restrictive allowed list of sources you trust, then expanding access over time”.
A sandbox with no outbound connection
For data analysis Almanac runs code in a sandbox that “has no outbound connection”, so analysis can fail when a library is missing. That is a sensible default for patient data.
Team roles and resource access
Team workspaces distinguish members, admins and billing admins, support groups, and let admins grant tools and connectors to specific groups. Deactivating a member releases their seat.
| Permission mode | Behaviour, in the app’s words | Suggested use |
|---|---|---|
| Most cautious | “Asks before every action, including reading files.” | Pilots and any patient data |
| Balanced | “Reads freely. Asks before editing files or running commands.” | Research and document work |
| Most autonomous | “Edits files and runs commands without asking.” | Non-clinical tasks only |
What Almanac Health Costs
Almanac Health publishes individual pricing on its site. Prices exclude tax, usage limits apply, and plans can change.
Free
The Free plan costs $0 and includes conversations, vetted clinical sources, citations with every answer and limited daily messages.
Pro, $30 a month
Pro adds higher daily message limits, deeper search across the medical corpus, memory that carries across conversations and priority email support.
Max, from $150 a month
Max offers a choice of five or twenty times Pro’s usage, priority access at peak times, early access to new features and higher output limits for long tasks. At the five-times level, $150 buys five Pro allowances for five times Pro’s price, so the unit cost is the same $30 and the premium is priority and capacity rather than a discount.
Teams and usage credits
Team workspaces use usage credits once a plan’s included usage runs out, with a monthly workspace cap. A fast mode runs the company’s Summit model at higher speed but consumes usage at a higher rate.
Annual cost rises from nothing to at least $1,800 across the three individual plans.
The Research Behind Almanac Health
Almanac Health grew out of published research, which is unusual for a clinical AI launch and worth reading closely.
Almanac, 2023
The original Almanac paper, first posted on arXiv in March 2023 and later published in NEJM AI, augmented large language models with retrieval from medical sources. Tested on 130 clinical scenarios assessed by five board-certified physicians, it reported “significant increases in factuality (mean of 18% at p-value < 0.05)” across specialties, with gains in completeness and safety.
Almanac Copilot, 2024
The follow-up, Almanac Copilot, was an agent for EHR tasks such as information retrieval and order placement. On EHR-QA, a synthetic set of 300 common EHR queries based on real patient data, it completed 74 per cent of tasks with a mean score of 2.45 out of 3.
From paper to product
The product combines both lines of work: retrieval-grounded answers with citations, and an agent that can act in the EHR. It uses natural language processing to connect a clinician’s question to sources and records, which is the same idea the papers tested, now in a commercial wrapper.
What the papers do not prove
The papers evaluated research prototypes, partly on synthetic data, not the product that launched this week. Almanac Health says its platform is still undergoing clinical validation in academic medical centres. Treat the papers as evidence of the approach, not of the product’s performance.
On its own benchmark the EHR agent finished roughly three tasks in four.
How Almanac Health Handles Evidence and Sources
Evidence is the part of the product Almanac Health talks about most, and its plans show how that evidence is rationed.
Citations on every plan
The Free plan includes “Vetted clinical sources” and “Citations with every answer”, so even the unpaid tier shows its working. In a clinical tool the citation matters as much as the answer, because it is what a clinician checks.
Deeper search on paid plans
Pro adds “Deeper search across the medical corpus”. Almanac Health has not published what that corpus contains, which journals, guidelines or drug references are included, or how often it is updated. Ask for that list before a pilot.
Web access under your control
Beyond its own sources, Almanac can search the web and read pages, within the allowed and blocked lists set by an administrator. For clinical use, a short allow list of guideline bodies and formularies is the safer start.
No advertising in the answers
Almanac Health says its platform carries no pharmaceutical advertising. That separates it from free clinical references funded by sponsors, and it is worth confirming in the contract as well as the marketing.
| Evidence feature | Free | Pro | Max |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vetted clinical sources | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Citations with every answer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Deeper search across the medical corpus | No | Yes | Yes |
| Memory across conversations | No | Yes | Yes |
| Daily message allowance | Limited | Higher | 5 or 20 times Pro |
Who Is Behind Almanac Health
The company is small and young, and its founder’s background explains most of its design choices.
Cyril Zakka
Zakka is a physician-researcher who joined Stanford’s Hiesinger Lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2022, working on robotic surgery, cardiac imaging and AI. He later joined Hugging Face in 2024 to lead AI work on biomedical and healthcare applications, and released its HuggingChat macOS app.
The seed round
On 23 April 2026 Almanac Health announced a $10 million seed round led by F-Prime, with General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing total funding to nearly $12 million.
Stated principles
The company says its platform integrates with existing EHR systems, operates under institutional governance, is grounded in peer-reviewed evidence and carries no pharmaceutical advertising. At the seed round Zakka said: “There is no shortage of technologies promising to transform medicine. But few are grounded in real evidence, built with integrity and deserving of trust.”
Investor view
Carl Byers of F-Prime said Zakka is “one of the rare founders who has both the clinical training and technical depth to build AI that clinicians will actually trust.”
Where Almanac Health Fits Among Clinical AI Tools
Clinical AI has settled into three familiar categories. Almanac Health is trying to occupy all three at once.
Evidence tools
Tools that answer clinical questions with citations are the most established category. Almanac Health’s cited answers compete here directly.
Ambient scribes
Tools that listen to a consultation and draft the note are the fastest-growing category. The /visit command, with audio and transcript attached, is Almanac Health’s entry point.
EHR agents
Tools that act inside the record, retrieving results or placing orders, are the newest. The Epic connection and plugin store are the bet here, and they carry the most risk.
The breadth trade-off
A single workspace means one login, one governance model and one vendor to assess. It also means one vendor carrying every risk, so the procurement case rests on the controls described above working as described.
| Category | Typical job | Almanac Health feature | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evidence tool | Answer questions with citations | Cited clinical answers | A wrong answer presented confidently |
| Ambient scribe | Draft notes from a consultation | /visit capture and dictation | Transcription errors in the record |
| EHR agent | Retrieve data, act in the record | Epic connection, plugins | An action taken on the wrong patient |
| Research workspace | Repeatable review and writing | Skills, Library, file creation | Unreviewed output reaching patients |
What to Check Before Adopting Almanac Health
For a UK hospital, practice or research group, the questions are about data, clinical safety and configuration.
Data protection and hosting
The public pages we read do not state data residency, retention periods or health-data agreements. Almanac Health runs a trust centre at trust.almanac.chat; ask for its security documentation and a data processing agreement before any patient data goes in. Our data protection team can help review those terms against UK GDPR.
Clinical safety standards
NHS organisations deploying health IT work under the DCB0160 clinical risk management standard, and manufacturers under DCB0129. Ask Almanac Health for its clinical safety case and hazard log, and appoint your own clinical safety officer for the deployment.
Configuration
Start with the most cautious permission mode, a restrictive web allow list and EHR access limited to a pilot group. Widen each only when the pilot data supports it.
Evaluation
Test the workspace on your own cases, in your own specialty, before relying on it. Vendor papers describe prototypes; your pilot describes your reality.
Frequently Asked Questions About Almanac Health
What is Almanac Health?
A clinical AI company founded by physician-researcher Cyril Zakka. Its product, Almanac Chat, launched on 23 September 2026 as an AI workspace for clinical work.
Who can use Almanac Chat?
Licensed healthcare professionals, and medical students, residents and fellows in accredited programmes. Access is invite-only at launch.
How much does it cost?
Free at $0, Pro at $30 a month and Max from $150 a month, before tax, with team workspaces using usage credits.
Does it connect to Epic?
Yes, for team workspaces. Users sign in with their own Epic credentials at their organisation’s FHIR endpoint.
Is it a replacement for clinical judgement?
No. Users attest that they will not use it as a substitute for their own independent clinical judgement, and it is not intended for patients.
References
Almanac Chat plans and pricing
Almanac Health Raises $10 Million to Empower Clinicians Across Specialties
Almanac Health Launches with $10M to Scale Research-Validated Clinical AI
Almanac: Retrieval-Augmented Language Models for Clinical Medicine
Almanac Copilot: Towards Autonomous Electronic Health Record Navigation
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