OpenEvidence Performance Tuning
Overview
OpenEvidence's clinical API handles evidence query response times, citation batch retrieval, and complex multi-condition query optimization. Clinical evidence queries can take 2-5 seconds as the system searches across thousands of medical studies and synthesizes responses. Citation batch retrieval for systematic reviews generates heavy load when fetching 50-200 references per query. Caching evidence responses, batching citation fetches, and optimizing query specificity reduces clinician wait times by 50-70% and keeps complex queries within acceptable latency bounds.
Caching Strategy
const cache = new Map<string, { data: any; expiry: number }>();
const TTL = { evidence: 1_800_000, citations: 3_600_000, queries: 300_000 };
async function cached(key: string, ttlKey: keyof typeof TTL, fn: () => Promise<any>) {
const entry = cache.get(key);
if (entry && entry.expiry > Date.now()) return entry.data;
const data = await fn();
cache.set(key, { data, expiry: Date.now() + TTL[ttlKey] });
return data;
}
// Citations are stable (1hr). Evidence summaries update with new studies (30 min).
Batch Operations
async function fetchCitationsBatch(client: any, citationIds: string[], batchSize = 25) {
const results = [];
for (let i = 0; i < citationIds.length; i += batchSize) {
const batch = citationIds.slice(i, i + batchSize);
const res = await Promise.all(batch.map(id => client.getCitation(id)));
results.push(...res);
if (i + batchSize < citationIds.length) await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 500));
}
return results;
}
