Health IT giant Epic is pushing ahead rapidly to build out artificial intelligence technologies and generative AI features in its electronic health record software.
The goal, according to Epic executives, is to ease the documentation burden for clinicians, streamline charting and coding and bring evidence-based medical insights and research right to doctors' fingertips at the point of care.
Epic is using AI combined with cloud technologies and its troves of patient data to change how EHR systems work, executives said during the company's User Group Meeting in Verona, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.
The company's MyChart in-basket augmented response technology (ART), which automatically drafts responses to patient messages, is now in use at 150 healthcare systems and medical groups with 1 million drafts generated each month, CEO Judy Faulkner told the audience of health IT professionals at the UGM event.
"It saves clinicians about half a minute a message, and that can add up. And importantly, patients say they like it, and many prefer it. ART's responses are often more empathetic than the very busy doctors," Faulkner said. "I think that's kind of funny. The machine is more human than the human."
As typical at UGM events, Faulkner and other executives dressed up in costumes. Faulkner dressed as a new character, "Lady Swan" which was inspired by "Mother Goose" to match the Storybook theme of the event.
In April 2023, at the HIMSS conference, Epic unveiled a collaboration with Microsoft to integrate large language model tools and AI into its electronic health record software.
Epic also developed an AI tool combined with ambient voice technology to aid with charting progress notes in the EHR following a patient exam. That feature is now in use at 186 organizations, Faulkner said.
Studies have shown that 40% to 60% of clinicians report they are experiencing burnout. Epic contends that generative AI tools can help address some of healthcare's most urgent needs, from workforce burnout to staffing shortages.
"AI charting allows your clinicians to focus on their patients while the technology listens quietly in the background. The note is then ready in seconds after the conversation is finished. Your clinicians have been really positive. They have told us it saves their marriage. They've told us they're no longer going to quit medicine," Faulkner told the audience. "AI, as you've seen, the future is here. Now, there's a lot more that we are doing."
Beyond patient notes, Epic is exploring the use of AI to queue up orders and diagnoses, populate flowsheets automatically for nurses and populate specialty forms automatically for physicians.
The company is also working on more than 100 generative AI projects such as auto-adverse drug reaction tagging, patient-friendly report summary, a hospital billing coding assistant and an "explain my bill" AI agent, among many other use cases.
A new AI feature that searches the patient chart and surfaces important information for clinicians will be available next February, executives said.
"You are going to hear a lot about AI today. We've been very busy building over 100 new capabilities," Sumit Rana, senior vice president at Epic, told the audience on Tuesday. "Our mission is to maximize the use of AI across all areas, from clinical to administrative, while, of course, complying with evolving regulatory requirements."
He added, "We've woven Cosmos, MyChart and the Health Grid into all of our software, and as they continue to grow in scale, so does the potential for meaningful impact, and they're getting turbocharged with AI."
Healthcare executives have raised concerns about the cost and return on investment of AI tools, Rana noted. "It's been one of the largest joint efforts with Microsoft, for us, optimizing at every layer to reduce cost. For example, compute costs for AI ART have been cut in half since last year, and I expect costs to continue to go down," he said.
As part of Epic's expanding work in AI, the company launched in May an open source tool to enable healthcare organizations to test and monitor artificial intelligence models. The AI validation software suite is free and available to the public on GitHub, Corey Miller, vice president of research and development at Epic, told Fierce Healthcare back in May. Health systems can download the code to their electronic health record systems, he said.
Faulkner offered more details about the new point-of-care tools Epic is developing by leveraging its Cosmos research database, which encompasses 270 million patient records from over 13 billion encounters, representing patients in all 50 states.
A Cosmos tool, called "Look-Alikes," is now live and enables physicians to identify mystery and rare diseases by finding patients with similar symptoms and then connect with those patients' physicians to share resources. That tool is live now at 65 sites, Faulkner said.
Epic's "Best Care Choices for My Patient" tool offers the capability to get recommendations on treatments that worked for other similar patient profiles.
"We've been told several times that not enough of the treatments prescribed by physicians are evidence-based, perhaps even as low as 10%. The rest are what others have done, what they have used in the past. How do you get the right treatment for your patients? Best Care Choices looks at your patient and finds the hundreds or thousands who are very similar. It will show you the different treatments these patients received and how effectively each one worked, then you and the patient can discuss the findings and pick what's best," she told the UGM audience.
Best Care Choices for My Patient is being "test-driven" by NYU Langone Health and Parkview Health and is not yet in live production.
"We have been told that Best Care Choices will be game-changing," Faulkner said.
Faulkner also highlighted Epic's ongoing work to collaborate with payers and support better communication between insurers and providers. The company's payer platform, which enables payers to access data from EHRs, now includes major insurers such as Aetna, Elevance Health, Humana, Centene, UnitedHealthcare and several Blue Cross Blue Shield plans.
Epic is working with payers to streamline prior authorization requests, Faulkner noted. "Half our health systems and medical groups are now connected to one or more payers. Through payer platforms, we've seen some strong successes, from reducing denials to getting patients care faster because of automated prior auths," she said Tuesday.
"The things that benefits the providers also benefit the payers because it reduces their workload too of constantly redoing things," she added.
In January, Epic rolled out new third-party vendor programs to connect health tech companies with health systems and providers. The new third-party vendor programs, as part of a new website called Showroom, essentially replace the app market Epic shut down in late 2023.
Other new developments and features highlighted during the UGM event on Tuesday:
- Epic's specialty diagnostics suite, Aura, simplifies provider access to genetic testing information. Ten diagnostic labs are now connected to Aura. And the platform has been expanded to Aura for medical devices. "This allows you to see the data from medical devices directly in the workflow. It eliminated the need for you to have to access separate portals. This will help you diagnose and intervene sooner. We're starting with the wearable health monitors. Welcome iRhythm [Technologies], and next up is continuous glucose monitoring," Faulkner said.
- A new feature in Health Grid will help improve the efficiency of surgical supplies and implants. This feature will enable better integration between surgical schedules in Epic and the manufacturers, Faulkner said.
- Epic will roll out "Garden Plot" for cooperative Epic instances for small to medium-sized medical groups. "We created Garden Plot which helps smaller medical groups get Epic," Faulkner said. "We believe that by groups across the country working together in the same specialty and in the same instance, they will have excellent results. The plots we currently have are primary care and orthopedics."
- The company is working with the state of Washington on an initiative to enhance healthcare management and coordination to enable small clinics, behavioral health clinics, correctional medical facilities and tribal facilities to have access to Epic software.