Epic Systems is gearing up to unleash a wave of generative AI innovations in 2024, with more than 60 AI-related development projects in progress, a company spokesperson told Becker's.
In the new year, the EHR vendor aims to enhance clinical efficiency, offer personalized patient experiences, increase operational efficiency and continue advancing medicine. Here is a look into their 2024 strategy:
Boosting clinical efficiency
One key focus for Epic is to boost clinical efficiency through the power of generative AI. The company is working on projects that summarize information from patient charts, enabling clinicians to quickly catch up on their patients. Additionally, the introduction of generative AI will facilitate the creation of first drafts of responses to patient messages, enabling healthcare providers to respond promptly. Ambient listening is another feature Epic is working on. This feature aims to document visits and enhance face-to-face time between healthcare providers and patients.
Personalized patient experiences
Epic said it is committed to offering patients more personal, self-service experiences. This involves the utilization of native live chat and chatbot tools to streamline communication between patients and healthcare providers. The company is also developing simple builder tools that empower customers to create unique experiences in MyChart with minimal involvement from IT teams. Integrating patient satisfaction data within the EHR is another way Epic aims to provide a more seamless and personalized healthcare journey.
Increased operational efficiency
Epic is actively working on projects to deliver insights for data-driven staffing decisions. The focus extends to maximizing the capacity of operating rooms, infusion schedules and hospital beds. The goal is to move patients through inpatient, post-acute and at-home care settings more efficiently, ensuring a smoother and more effective healthcare workflow.
Advancing medicine
Epic is set to roll out the early stages of "Best Care Choices for My Patient" in 2024. This initiative aims to assist physicians in choosing the right treatment for their patients by bringing evidence-based medicine to the point of care. Additionally, the company is leveraging generative AI to make research more intuitive, turning conversational prompts into data queries. This functionality is already available for Cosmos data and will soon be extended to local data, aiming to provide healthcare professionals with valuable insights.
Epic is also using EpicResearch.org to share insights drawn from Cosmos data with healthcare professionals, researchers and other stakeholders globally.