Epic Systems is working on streamlining communications between healthcare providers and insurance companies, as the vendor says the process is time-consuming, Wisconsin Public Radio reported July 12.
"We saw an opportunity many years ago, working with some of the large national payers and a lot of our health insurance companies that are owned by hospitals and clinics to work together to say, 'There's a better way to do this,'" Karsten Smith, director of health plan applications for Epic, told the news outlet. "We can use data and automate a lot of our process."
Mr. Smith said another area of focus for the company is artificial intelligence. Epic is currently working on how to use the technology to streamline clinical workflows.
"Ultimately, we want patients to have meaningful face-to-face time with their doctors, and faster responses to questions," Mr. Smith said.
The company recently partnered with Microsoft to train the tech giant's Azure OpenAI on a large collection of information so it can asynchronously draft responses to patient messages for providers within the patient portal.