And one theme stood out during the health-care company’s event on Tuesday: How new artificial intelligence features can help doctors and patients.
Epic is a health-care software giant whose technology is used in thousands of U.S. hospitals and clinics.
Faulkner said the company has more than 100 AI features in the works, though many of the tools are still in the early stages of development.
For instance, by the end of this year, Epic said its generative AI will help doctors revise message responses, letters and instructions into plain language that patients can understand.
Doctors will be able to use AI to automatically queue up orders for prescriptions and labs, the company said.
Epic announced plans for a new staff scheduling application for physicians and nurses called “Teamwork” that’s coming soon.
Whether these features will all come to fruition — and whether health systems will actually use them — isn’t yet known.
He spoke to an AI agent through the MyChart app about his recovery after a supposed wrist surgery and answered questions about his pain.
The CEO of Epic Systems, Judy Faulkner, took the stage this week to give a keynote address in front of thousands of executives in the healthcare industry while wearing a swan-themed outfit complete with feathers.
Faulkner’s costume may have confused some first-timers, even by the more laid-back standards of the tech industry (consider Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s signature leather jacket, for example). It was, however, business as usual for many veterans of the healthcare industry and Epic staff, indicating that the company’s annual Users Group Meeting had officially begun. During the health-care company’s event on Tuesday, a recurring theme emerged: the ways in which novel artificial intelligence features can benefit physicians and patients.
The massive healthcare software company Epic is utilized in thousands of U.S. S. clinical facilities and hospitals. For over 280 million people in the United States, the company holds medical records. S. despite the fact that patients frequently have data stored with several vendors.
animals and wizards.
Every year, a large number of individuals gather at Epic’s Verona, Wisconsin headquarters to learn about the company’s most recent projects and offerings. CNBC was present at the festivities on Tuesday for UGM, one of the company’s biggest yearly on-campus celebrations.
Built with themes such as “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wizard of Oz,” Epic’s 1,670-acre campus is .ted with statues of wizards and farm animals. Faulkner and other Epic executives spoke while dressed as characters from various children’s books, which fits with the “storytime” theme of this year’s conference.
While sharing updates about Epic’s main products, such as MyChart, an app that patients can use to access their medical records, and Cosmos, a deidentified patient dataset that clinicians can use to conduct research, there was no shortage of skits and jingles.
Epic’s announcements regarding artificial intelligence.
The company’s efforts to incorporate AI into these products were the subject of many of Epic’s announcements. More than 100 AI features are reportedly under development at the company, according to Faulkner, even though many of the tools are still in the prototype stage.
Epic, for example, stated that by the end of the year, its generative AI will assist physicians in rewriting instructions, letters, and message responses into easily understood plain language for patients. AI will enable doctors to queue up orders for lab work and prescriptions automatically, according to the company.
Epic stated that it is working to launch AI tools that can expedite time-consuming tasks that many doctors have to complete, such as reviewing prior authorization requirements and writing letters of appeal for insurance denials.
When a doctor responds to a patient’s message through MyChart, Epic’s generative AI will be able to pull in the results, prescriptions, and other information, the company said, by the end of 2025. Next year will also see the addition of more specialized features, such as the ability to measure wounds using AI and picture data.
Epic has revealed plans to launch “Teamwork,” a new staff scheduling app designed specifically for doctors and nurses. Moreover, Epic is “investigating,” according to Faulkner, how it might enable claim submissions through its software directly, doing away with the need for a clearinghouse or other intermediary. If Epic is successful, the way insurance claims are handled across the board in the healthcare sector may undergo a significant shift.
It’s unclear at this point if all of these features will materialize and if health systems will make use of them. Nevertheless, Epic showcased an ambitious demo of where the company thinks its technology can go as it concluded its presentation on Tuesday.
The times ahead.
Lead research and development officer at Epic, Seth Hain, led the demonstration. During his recovery from what appeared to be a wrist surgery, he answered questions about his pain and discussed his recovery with an AI agent via the MyChart app. To assess the extent of his recovery, the agent gave Hain instructions to bend his wrist back and turn on his camera. In comparison to data from patients who were similar to him in Epic’s Cosmos database, the agent said that Hain’s wrist extension was between 60 and 75 degrees, indicating that his recovery was ahead of schedule.
When Hain inquired about picking up pickleball again, the agent advised him that he “should still wait a little longer” before returning to the game.
Following the presentation, Hain met with reporters and explained that the demo was taking place automatically in real time without any human involvement. But that feature is so new that Epic hasn’t even given it a name yet, and Hain stated that it will probably take a few years before it becomes more generally accessible.
Regarding how and where the medical community as a whole will accept that kind of thing, he stated, “it is very, very, very early, but it’s viable.”.
