The recent public announcement of ChatGPT catalyzed hundreds of new applications for electronic health records. Now well-established for more than twenty years this technology is maturing. The expectation is to streamline the use of electronic health records to include many use cases.
EPIC, a world-class enterprise EHR solution has announced a plethora of add-ons.
A flurry of AI, Partnerships, and New Features Announced at Epic
Sprinkled through Faulkner’s opening address were several announcements related to generative AI, the technology that has captivated the world. Epic has or will deploy generative AI capabilities in the following areas:
In-Baskets. AI will generate drafts of responses to in-basket items for clinicians so instead of having to hand-craft responses from scratch, they can simply modify what the AI creates. Early response has been positive with some patients commenting how the generated responses are more empathetic than prior communications.
Ambient Clinical Notes. Powered by Microsoft/Nuance’s DAX solution.
This use of AI eliminates the task of recording and transcribing clinical notes, a key cause of physician burnout
Explaining Medical Bills. An AI-powered chatbot will be available in the future through Epic’s Hello World platform that will help explain complex medical bills to patients.
Note Summaries. For both clinicians and researchers, AI will be used to create summaries of notes.
Coding and Billing. AI will be used to make suggestions to coders based on what it finds in the medical record.
Rare Disease research. AI embedded within Epic will one day be able to more quickly identify patients who have similar symptoms and other characteristics which will accelerate research of rare diseases.
Additional partnerships were also announced. Epic’s new partnership program, dubbed “Showroom”
Within Showroom are four distinct partnership categories (note: not levels) for third-party vendors:
Pals for companies with new products in new key areas (read: companies with promising technologies in areas where Epic does not currently have a solution). There are currently two companies in this category. Abridge offers generative AI for clinical documentation and was the first company named to the “Pals” category. Talkdesk, makers of a contact-center-as-a-service platform is the other company.
Partners for established market leaders in specific areas. Nuance is a company in this category. They have been working to integrate their ambient clinical voice solution, DAX, with Epic for a number of years. PressGaney is also in this category as a solution provider for consumer satisfaction surveys.
Cornerstone Partners for products Epic uses in key ways in their software. Two long-time Epic partners are in this category – InterSystems and Microsoft
Most physicians will enthusiastically adopt these additions to their toolbox.
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