Cortex, Thalamus’s best-in-class application screening and review software, will be a complimentary offering to all ERAS® programs beginning in July 2025
Washington, D.C., November 7, 2024–The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), a non-profit association dedicated to transforming health through medical education, health care, medical research, and community collaborations, and Thalamus, a public benefit corporation focused on innovation in medical education, today announced that Cortex will be provided to all Electronic Residency Application Service® (ERAS®) medical residency and fellowship programs on a complimentary basis beginning in July 2025 for the 2026 ERAS season.
An innovative, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-enabled platform, Cortex is designed to provide technology-assisted holistic review by streamlining application screening and review and has reduced screening time by an average of 50%. The software aggregates key application data through natural language processing (NLP), optical character recognition (OCR), and other AI/ML technologies, and aligns with the AAMC’s principles for responsible artificial intelligence in residency and fellowship selection. Since the launch of Cortex in 2020, the software has streamlined review of over three million residency and fellowship applications at hospitals and health systems throughout the United States.
“The AAMC is committed to advancing the transition to residency process through innovation. We are pleased to add Cortex into the ERAS program’s complimentary offerings as we expand and enhance resources for learners, programs, and schools,” said David J. Skorton, MD, AAMC president and CEO. “We have received a great deal of positive feedback from the medical education community over the last 18 months, since forming our collaboration with Thalamus, and we are eager to expand our strategic partnership to further support learners and programs. The impact we have seen to date, with over 90% of residency programs across specialties opting-in to use Thalamus products, is just the first step.”
Cortex is currently being piloted by three specialties for the 2025 ERAS recruitment season: orthopaedic surgery, physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R), and urology. Following the early success of the pilot, the software will be made available to all programs using the ERAS platform beginning in July 2025, which marks the start of the 2026 ERAS recruitment season.
This is the latest offering from the strategic collaboration between the AAMC and Thalamus, which was established in April 2023. Alongside the Cortex pilot, the organizations rolled out an application programming interface (API) to seamlessly transfer applicant data and documents directly from the ERAS Program Director’s Workstation (PDWS) into Thalamus products, including Thalamus Core, Cortex, and Cerebellum. Since the start of the 2025 ERAS recruiting season in July 2024, the API has transferred over 20 million data and document authorizations. Additionally, over 550,000 interview invitations have been sent through Thalamus Core.
“Cortex for all ERAS programs is a huge technological leap forward for academic medicine, expanding upon a comprehensive platform that also incorporates the Thalamus Holistic Review scoring software alongside the AAMC’s leading holistic review framework,” said Jason Reminick, MD, MBA, MS, CEO and founder of Thalamus. “This further aligns our organizational missions toward ensuring a diverse physician workforce and improving health outcomes for patients and society.”
Over the next year, the AAMC and Thalamus will continue to build on the integration between the ERAS program and Cortex, focusing on additional AI/ML capabilities to enhance trainee selection, as well as expansion of data and research to benefit the broader physician workforce.
The AAMC and Thalamus look forward to working with applicants, schools, programs, and specialty leadership to incorporate these new technologies into their transition to residency processes.
The AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) is a nonprofit association dedicated to improving the health of people everywhere through medical education, health care, medical research, and community collaborations. Its members are all 159 U.S. medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education; 13 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 500 academic health systems and teaching hospitals, including Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and more than 70 academic societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC leads and serves America’s medical schools, academic health systems and teaching hospitals, and the millions of individuals across academic medicine, including more than 201,000 full-time faculty members, 97,000 medical students, 158,000 resident physicians, and 60,000 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the biomedical sciences. Following a 2022 merger, the Alliance of Academic Health Centers International broadened participation in the AAMC by 70 international academic health centers throughout five regional offices across the globe. Learn more at aamc.org.
Thalamus is a public benefit corporation and the premier, cloud-based interview management platform designed specifically for application to Graduate Medical Education (GME) training programs. The software streamlines communication by eliminating unnecessary phone calls/emails allowing applicants to book interviews in real-time, while acting as a comprehensive applicant tracking system for residency and fellowship programs. Thalamus provides comprehensive online interview scheduling and travel coordination via a real-time scheduling system, video interview platform, AI application screening/review tool (Cortex) providing technology-assisted holistic review, and first-in-class DEI-focused analytics dashboard (Cerebellum). Now featured nationally at over 800+ institutions and used by nearly all applicants, Thalamus is the most comprehensive solution in GME interview management. For more information on Thalamus, please visit https://thalamusgme.com or connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), or YouTube.
Media Contacts: Sarah Nathan, Thalamus (608) 218-0070 sarah.nathan@thalamusgme.com Christina Spoehr, AAMC (202) 828-0473 cspoehr@aamc.org