Epic’s “Storytime” User Group Meeting is officially a wrap, and the number of updates shared at the event would be hard pressed to keep with the theme and fit in a children’s book.
CEO Judy Faulkner donned the podium dressed as Mother Goose to tell the tale of Epic’s recent advances, AI roadmap, and even a “25-to-50-year” company plan.
It wouldn’t be a 2024 UGM without AI hogging the spotlight, and the EHR behemoth certainly delivered on that front. Highlights included:
- Epic currently has two killer use cases for AI. Medical scribes (186 user orgs), and draft responses to portal messages (150 user orgs). Those counts reflect the number of “user” orgs, but it wasn’t clear how many have done system-wide deployments.
- Epic is actively working on over 100 new GenAI solutions, ranging from auto-populating forms and discharge papers to delivering evidence-based insights at the point of care.
- Epic Cosmos’ Look-Alikes AI tool is now live at 65 sites, helping identify rare diseases by cross-referencing symptoms in its database of over 226M patient records and connecting physicians with kindred cases.
The teasers stole the show, and physicians (or payors!) have plenty to look forward to if Epic can deliver.
- An upcoming Best Care Choices for My Patient tool will provide treatment recommendations at the point of care based on what worked / didn’t work for similar patients. NYU Langone and Parkview Health are already test-driving the solution.
- A new Payor Platform is now available to all health system customers, with AI features to streamline prior auths, manage claims denials, and connect provider directories. Epic is also exploring how to cut out clearinghouse middlemen by sending PA documentation directly to payors.
- By the end of next year, MyChart’s GenAI will be able to pull in test results, medications, and other patient details to better customize draft messages and help automatically queue up orders for labs and prescriptions.
- A Teamwork staff scheduling application is sparse on details but on the way “soon.”
The Takeaway
Given how much time clinicians spend in the EHR and the treasure trove of data it holds, it isn’t a surprise that Epic has become an integral component of its health systems’ AI strategy. That said, user group meetings are meant to excite user groups, and we’ll know soon enough how many of these announcements were just Storytime.
