Epic, the health IT giant, knows how to showcase its technology developments in style. At the 45th User Group Meeting (UGM) in Verona, Wisconsin last week, CEO Judy Faulkner announced the expansive AI led strategy to transform the industry in front of 7,000 Epic customers.
Key Developments
The 2 Pronged AI strategy focusses around delivering more value to the customers in-house, through a basket of AI services and also establishing itself as an AI innovator with the ambition of fastening the pace of delivery and improving the quality of care.
- Epic announced an AI Project Pipeline with over 100 generative AI projects in development, including services like Automated form and flowsheet population, Auto-tagging of drug reactions and Patient-friendly summary generation
- AI medical scribes implemented by 186 client organizations and the AI-drafted patient message features are used by 150 organizations, generating 1 million drafts monthly signalling a strong focus on
- MyChart, the AI-Powered Chart Mining tool is used by doctors to extract and present relevant clinical information from patient charts and can be accessed by patients.
- ‘Cosmos’ is a clinical information platform that includes de-identified patient dataset from 270 million patient records and is live at 65 sites and helps identify rare diseases by finding similar patient profiles
- ‘Best Care Choices’, a Cosmos program helps make data informed decisions by identifying cohorts of similar patients
Implications and Challenges
- Workflow Transformation & Adoption: New AI tools promise to significantly alter clinical workflows, reduce administrative burdens and enhance decision-making processes. However, success depends on organisations being able to effectively implement these new features, which may require substantial training and workflow adjustments
- Data Privacy and Security: Vast amounts of patient data is needed, thus robust data protection measures will be crucial.
- Clinical Validation: The effectiveness and accuracy of AI-driven insights will need rigorous validation to ensure patient safety and clinician trust.
- Cost Considerations: While Epic claims to be working on reducing compute costs for AI features, healthcare organizations will need to evaluate the ROI of implementing these new tools
MarianaAI’s Take
Epic's aggressive push into AI-enhanced systems signals major shifts in EHR functionality and clinical decision support. This kind of pace in AI development in healthcare necessitates careful monitoring and regulation to ensure that these tools enhances human judgment in medical decision-making.
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