Visitors attend UGM 2025.
Courtesy of Epic
Space vacationers, robots and, after all, synthetic intelligence.
They have been all on show on Tuesday at Epic Systems‘ annual Users Group Meeting, held on the well being software program big’s 1,670-acre campus in Verona, Wisconsin.
Judy Faulkner, Epic’s 82-year-old CEO, dressed for the event in a purple wig with neon inexperienced footwear and an iridescent vest, paying homage to the fictional character Buzz Lightyear from the “Toy Story” franchise.
At the science fiction-themed occasion, Faulkner informed the group that Epic has roughly 200 totally different AI options in growth that intention to help sufferers, clinicians and insurers.
“We are combining the intelligence and curiosity of the human being with the investigative capabilities of gen AI,” Faulkner mentioned, in entrance of 1000’s of health-care executives packed into an 11,400-seat underground auditorium.
Epic, one of many largest personal expertise corporations within the nation, is greatest recognized for its digital well being document, or EHR, software program. An EHR is a digital model of a affected person’s medical historical past that is up to date by medical doctors and nurses, and the expertise is integral to the fashionable U.S. health-care system.
Epic’s software program, which competes with Oracle Health (previously Cerner), is utilized by 280 million Americans, in accordance with the corporate. Many sufferers know of Epic due to its consumer portal known as MyChart.
Last week, Epic announced MyChart Central, which is able to enable sufferers to log in to MyChart with only one set of credentials, reasonably than needing a username and password for every well being system they go to. It’s equally useful for health-care organizations, Faulkner mentioned.
“You’ll spend less time handling patient calls and resetting passwords,” she mentioned in her keynote on Tuesday. “Demographic changes like address need to be added only once.”
A new addition to the MyChart portal is the always-on Emmie assistant, which the corporate mentioned will have the ability to reply questions on lab outcomes, suggest appointment occasions and counsel related screenings that sufferers can focus on with their physician.
During Epic’s three-hour presentation, Faulkner and different executives launched Emmie in addition to different AI assistants the corporate calls Art and Penny, highlighting new capabilities which can be coming within the subsequent 12 months and past.
Health-care executives attend UGM 2025.
Courtesy of Epic
The Art assistant is meant for clinicians, and is supposed to behave as an energetic AI digital colleague, the corporate mentioned. Art will have the ability to anticipate info that a health care provider may want, as an example, and may pull up info like blood strain developments, replace a affected person’s household historical past and place orders.
The firm additionally mentioned Art will have the ability to draft scientific notes, which was one of the crucial extremely anticipated bulletins forward of the convention. AI-powered scientific documentation tools, which are sometimes known as AI scribes, can take notes on affected person visits in actual time as medical doctors document their encounters, with a affected person’s consent.
AI scribes have exploded in reputation as health-care executives seek for options to assist scale back employees burnout and daunting administrative workloads. Some startups within the house, together with Abridge and Ambience Healthcare, have raised lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} from traders.
Epic mentioned its AI charting software is being in-built collaboration with Microsoft. Epic and Microsoft have been working intently collectively for roughly 20 years, and Microsoft’s DAX Copilot product is already a preferred providing inside the AI scribing market.
“We’re proud to be collaborating with Epic to explore how we can bring our core Dragon ambient AI technology to Epic’s new AI Charting capability to further improve care delivery,” Joe Petro, company vp of Microsoft Health & Life Sciences mentioned in a press release.
Epic’s Penny assistant is designed to assist with income cycle administration and different administrative wants, corresponding to producing attraction letters for insurance coverage claims that get denied. It can even assist velocity up medical coding by serving up options, Faulkner mentioned. Those two options are already reside.
“With all the challenges health-care organizations are facing, we need to make sure our clinicians and our organizations are strong and doing well in order to be able to take care of patients,” Faulkner mentioned.
Epic closed out its govt deal with by teasing new AI capabilities which can be coming to Cosmos, which is a deidentified affected person dataset clinicians can use to conduct analysis. Health techniques should opt-in to take part in Cosmos, and the database at the moment consists of info from greater than 1,760 hospitals and 300 million sufferers.
Epic mentioned it is constructing a set of proprietary basis fashions, known as Cosmos AI, primarily based on this knowledge. The firm remains to be evaluating totally different purposes of the fashions, and launched the Cosmos AI Lab to assist researchers and knowledge scientists study extra.
Executives mentioned the fashions could possibly be used to foretell a timeline of a affected person’s potential medical occasions, like whether or not they’re a readmission danger or might finally expertise a coronary heart assault.
“We’re finding that it continues to improve as it sees more patients,” mentioned Seth Hain, a senior vp of analysis and growth at Epic. “Having only used 8 billion encounters so far, we’re just getting started.”
