Health system executives told Becker's they're excited about Epic's continued development of artificial intelligence after attending the EHR vendor's biggest annual meeting.
Thousands of healthcare leaders descended on Epic's headquarters in Verona, Wis., from Aug. 19-21 for the company's yearly Users Group Meeting that showcased the vendor's latest software projects.
"Of particular interest was the thoughtful integration of AI into clinical workflows and the hope of flipping the model from the physician/nurse working for the machine to the machine working for the physician/nurse — and all working for the patient," said John Phipps, MD, chief care transformation officer of Fairfax, Va.-based Inova Health System.
Glenn Hilburn, RN, BSN, chief application and informatics officer of Atlanta-based Grady Health System, said the advancements that stuck out to him were the patient flow capabilities of Epic's Cosmos informatics platform, the company's continued integration of ambient listening apps for clinical documentation, and the (still-in-testing) AI chatbot for patients in MyChart.
"One of the things that just was truly astounding was the progress in the past 12 months, from the last Users Group Meeting, of AI integration," he said. "At the executive address, there were pages of features and functions that are coming in the next several releases. They're all rooted with augmented intelligence at the base."
He said he would have liked to hear more discussion of Epic's plan to help organizations through downtime in the event of a cyberattack or other IT outage. He did, however, get to try out such a tool that's in testing.
Tom Bentley, RN, BSN, chief information and digital transformation officer of Columbus-based Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, said this was his 19th Users Group Meeting and he has never seen the company roll out new capabilities at this rate before.
"Epic is moving at a faster pace than they ever have incorporating AI, clinician efficiency features, and patient-facing technology," he said. "These features span both the full patient journey and a very wide range of clinical/rev cycle workflows."
The challenge for health system leaders, he said, is to keep up with implementation as these programs are released. "We need to be sure we are focusing on how to transform the organization and workforce as we adopt the new capabilities," he said.