Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine has developed a generative AI tool designed to help clinicians quickly identify and synthesize key information from patients’ electronic health records ahead of visits.
The tool, called Chart Hero, is embedded within the EHR and allows clinicians to ask questions in a chat-based interface to retrieve relevant clinical history, test results and prior treatments within minutes, according to a Jan. 8 Penn Medicine news release.
Chart Hero was created by Penn Medicine’s Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation in collaboration with the health system’s data and technology solutions team and clinical leaders. The platform is designed to address a common challenge for clinicians: navigating large volumes of patient data spread across multiple parts of the medical record.
Clinicians can use the tool to automatically gather and organize information relevant to a patient’s visit, reducing the need to manually search through extensive documentation. The system can also clarify clinical details when records include overlapping or complex conditions — such as distinguishing between similar procedures or summarizing separate cancer histories — according to the release.
The platform is currently being tested by a limited group of clinicians. As of August 2025, 10 clinicians were using Chart Hero, a number that has since grown to 30 as the team continues to evaluate and refine the system.
Developers are also working to reduce the risk of AI-generated errors, or hallucinations, by tying outputs directly to source data within the medical record and testing a secondary AI audit process, according to the release.
