Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and Epic just lit up its sci-fi themed User Group Meeting with enough futuristic new solutions to prove last week’s rumors true – and then some.
The future is now. This year’s event gave us a look at over 160 AI projects currently under development at Epic, including a three-product family set to immediately shake up the industry.
ART is a provider copilot for charting, pre-visit summaries, queuing up orders, and yes – ambient scribing.
- ART will reportedly be able to provide real-time suggestions during visits, and its highly-anticipated scribe still came as a surprise after Epic revealed that it will be powered by Microsoft when it arrives in early 2026. More on that later.
Emmie is a patient-facing advocate within MyChart that can help with everything from scheduling and reminders to education and navigation.
- Epic is positioning Emmie as the best place for patients to ask health questions and get answers that are actually grounded in their personal medical history.
Penny is an administrative assistant targeted at revenue cycle management, generating appeal letters, and supporting back-office tasks.
- There isn’t as much information out there on this one, but Epic doesn’t appear to be shying away from claims and payor workflows.
The EHR is dead, long live the CHR. Judy grabbed even more headlines by announcing that she’s retiring the term “EHR” in favor of “Comprehensive Health Record,” which seems fitting considering the other major announcements that joined the Big Three.
- Cosmos AI will provide diagnosis and treatment support, as well as discharge planning.
- MyChart Central will give patients a single login across all sites of care.
- Flower Pot will expand access to lightweight Epic implementations for smaller practices.
The scribe is real. Now what? Epic’s decision to team up with Microsoft on documentation was pretty unexpected given its 46-year track record of building everything in-house, confirming that the CHR giant would rather bend its core rules than lose market share.
- Scribes proved how fast health systems would layer on their own AI if Epic couldn’t keep up, and we’ll now have to wait and see if the cost and experience of Epic’s scribe is enough to compete with the flock of ambient AI innovators dedicated to this problem.
- Epic might own the “operating system,” almost as much as Microsoft owns Windows, but just because MS Paint exists doesn’t mean the world doesn’t need Adobe Photoshop.
The Takeaway
Some call it consolidation. Others call it innovation. Either way, this year’s UGM will probably go down as a key step along Epic’s march toward intergalactic domination.
