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htlin222/oe-extension

12JavaScriptAudience · generalComplexity · 2/5LicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

A Chrome extension for clinicians and medical students that lets you highlight text on a medical website and instantly search it in OpenEvidence, UpToDate, or Google, with optional AI-powered PICO rewriting.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((oe extension))
    What it does
      Highlight and search
      PICO rewriting
      Query history
    Search targets
      OpenEvidence
      UpToDate
      Google
    AI rewrite
      PICO format
      Custom prompt buttons
      Groq API key
    Setup
      Chrome developer mode
      Local install only
      No Web Store listing
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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Highlight a clinical finding on UpToDate and search it in OpenEvidence with one click.

USE CASE 2

Rewrite selected text as a structured PICO question before sending it to OpenEvidence for evidence-based search.

USE CASE 3

Define custom AI prompt buttons to summarize or reformat selected medical text before searching.

Tech stack

JavaScriptHTMLCSS

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Install by unzipping the GitHub release and loading it in Chrome developer mode, no Chrome Web Store listing available.

MIT license. Use, modify, and distribute freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as the copyright notice is kept.

In plain English

oe-extension is a Chrome browser extension aimed at clinicians, medical students, and anyone reading evidence-based medicine resources. The core idea is simple: highlight a passage of text on a medical website, click a button in the small toolbar that appears above the selection, and the extension opens OpenEvidence with that text as a search query in a new tab beside the current one. OpenEvidence is an AI-powered medical reference tool. Beyond the basic search, the extension also adds buttons to search the selected text in UpToDate and Google. If you provide a Groq API key (a free or paid account with an AI provider), the extension gains the ability to rewrite selected text before sending it. The main rewrite mode is called PICO, a structured format used in evidence-based medicine for framing clinical questions around Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome. You can also define your own custom prompt buttons with names like Dx or Summarize, each with instructions for how to transform the selection. The transformed result appears in an editable panel so you can review and adjust it before searching. The extension works on a whitelist of domains. By default it activates on OpenEvidence, UpToDate, the NEJM website, Anki study pages, and local files opened in the browser. You can add your own sites to the list. A query history tab records everything sent to OpenEvidence, including the original selection and any rewritten version. Installation is done by downloading a zip file from the GitHub releases page, unzipping it, and loading it through Chrome's developer extensions page. There is no Chrome Web Store listing. The Groq API key is stored locally in your browser and is never bundled with the extension or sent anywhere except to Groq when you use the rewrite features. The extension uses no external frameworks and is plain JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It is MIT licensed.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Help me set up oe-extension in Chrome so I can highlight text on NEJM and search it in OpenEvidence without copy-pasting.
Prompt 2
Configure oe-extension with my Groq API key and add a custom Dx button that rewrites selected text as a differential diagnosis question before searching.
Prompt 3
Using oe-extension, set up a PICO workflow so I can highlight a patient scenario on any whitelisted site and search a structured clinical question in OpenEvidence.
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