Epic touts new AI tools for patients and doctors at company's annual meeting

Space travelers, robots and, of course, artificial intelligence.

They were each connected show connected Tuesday at Epic Systems' yearly Users Group Meeting, held astatine the wellness bundle giant's 1,670-acre campus successful Verona, Wisconsin.

Judy Faulkner, Epic's 82-year-old CEO, dressed for the juncture successful a purple wig with neon greenish shoes and an iridescent vest, reminiscent of the fictional quality Buzz Lightyear from the "Toy Story" franchise.

At the subject fiction-themed event, Faulkner told the assemblage that Epic has astir 200 antithetic AI features successful improvement that purpose to assistance patients, clinicians and insurers.

"We are combining the quality and curiosity of the quality being with the investigative capabilities of gen AI," Faulkner said, successful beforehand of thousands of health-care executives packed into an 11,400-seat underground auditorium.

Epic, 1 of the largest backstage exertion companies successful the country, is champion known for its physics wellness record, oregon EHR, software. An EHR is simply a integer mentation of a patient's aesculapian past that's updated by doctors and nurses, and the exertion is integral to the modern U.S. health-care system.

Epic's software, which competes with Oracle Health (formerly Cerner), is utilized by 280 cardinal Americans, according to the company. Many patients cognize of Epic due to the fact that of its idiosyncratic portal called MyChart.

Last week, Epic announced MyChart Central, which volition let patients to log successful to MyChart with conscionable 1 acceptable of credentials, alternatively than needing a username and password for each wellness strategy they visit. It's arsenic adjuvant for health-care organizations, Faulkner said.

"You'll walk little clip handling diligent calls and resetting passwords," she said successful her keynote connected Tuesday. "Demographic changes similar code request to beryllium added lone once."

A caller summation to the MyChart portal is the always-on Emmie assistant, which the institution said volition beryllium capable to reply questions astir laboratory results, suggest assignment times and suggest applicable screenings that patients tin sermon with their doctor.

During Epic's three-hour presentation, Faulkner and different executives introduced Emmie arsenic good arsenic different AI assistants the institution calls Art and Penny, highlighting caller capabilities that are coming successful the adjacent twelvemonth and beyond.

The Art adjunct is intended for clinicians, and is meant to enactment arsenic an progressive AI integer colleague, the institution said. Art volition beryllium capable to expect accusation that a doc mightiness need, for instance, and tin propulsion up accusation similar humor unit trends, update a patient's household past and spot orders.

The institution besides said Art volition beryllium capable to draught objective notes, which was 1 of the astir highly anticipated announcements up of the conference. AI-powered objective documentation tools, which are often called AI scribes, tin instrumentality notes connected diligent visits successful existent clip arsenic doctors grounds their encounters, with a patient's consent.

AI scribes person exploded successful popularity arsenic health-care executives hunt for solutions to assistance trim unit burnout and daunting administrative workloads. Some startups successful the space, including Abridge and Ambience Healthcare, person raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors.

Epic said its AI charting instrumentality is being built successful collaboration with Microsoft. Epic and Microsoft person been moving intimately unneurotic for astir 2 decades, and Microsoft's DAX Copilot merchandise is already a fashionable offering wrong the AI scribing market.

"We're arrogant to beryllium collaborating with Epic to research however we tin bring our halfway Dragon ambient AI exertion to Epic's caller AI Charting capableness to further amended attraction delivery," Joe Petro, firm vice president of Microsoft Health & Life Sciences said successful a statement.

Epic's Penny adjunct is designed to assistance with gross rhythm absorption and different administrative needs, specified arsenic generating entreaty letters for security claims that get denied. It tin besides assistance velocity up aesculapian coding by serving up suggestions, Faulkner said. Those 2 features are already live.

"With each the challenges health-care organizations are facing, we request to marque definite our clinicians and our organizations are beardown and doing good successful bid to beryllium capable to instrumentality attraction of patients," Faulkner said.

Epic closed retired its enforcement code by teasing caller AI capabilities that are coming to Cosmos, which is simply a deidentified diligent dataset clinicians tin usage to behaviour research. Health systems person to opt-in to enactment successful Cosmos, and the database presently includes accusation from much than 1,760 hospitals and 300 cardinal patients.

Epic said it's gathering a acceptable of proprietary instauration models, called Cosmos AI, based connected this data. The institution is inactive evaluating antithetic applications of the models, and launched the Cosmos AI Lab to assistance researchers and information scientists larn more.

Executives said the models could beryllium utilized to foretell a timeline of a patient's imaginable aesculapian events, similar whether they're a readmission hazard oregon could yet acquisition a bosom attack.

"We're uncovering that it continues to amended arsenic it sees much patients," said Seth Hain, a elder vice president of probe and improvement astatine Epic. "Having lone utilized 8 cardinal encounters truthful far, we're conscionable getting started."

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