More than 85% of Epic customers are using the company’s AI tools.
Epic’s AI portfolio includes tools designed for clinicians, revenue cycle teams and patients. Early results shared by the company in a March 10 news release suggest the technology is helping reduce documentation burdens, streamline administrative processes and improve patient communication.
Here are eight things to know:
- One of the tools, called Art, is designed to support clinicians during care delivery and documentation. Health systems using Art’s Draft Hospital Course Notes are completing discharge summaries 20% to 30% faster, according to the news release. At Riverside Health in Newport News, Va., clinicians using Art’s Inpatient Insights have reduced time spent on documentation and communication tasks by up to 32%, the company said in the news release shared with Becker’s.
- Epic also said the technology is supporting earlier cancer detection in some cases. At The Christ Hospital Health Network in Cincinnati, Art extracts incidental findings from radiology reports and prompts follow-up, producing a lung cancer early detection rate of 69% compared with the national average of 46%.
- The company recently expanded the technology with Chart with Art, a feature that listens during patient visits, drafts clinical notes and queues orders based on the conversation. The capability launched in February across several outpatient specialties. Epic said Houston Methodist began using Chart with Art for bedside nursing workflows in March, and the company plans to release the feature for home care workflows in April.
- Beyond clinical documentation, Epic is expanding AI tools aimed at administrative and financial processes. Its revenue cycle AI system, Penny, is designed to automate tasks such as prior authorization and claim appeals. At Summit Health in New Providence, N.J., Penny reduced medication prior authorization submission time by 42%, with 92% of AI-generated responses accepted without edits, according to the news release.
- Epic is also deploying AI directly to patients through a digital assistant called Emmie. At Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, the tool has reduced billing-related customer service messages by 58%, according to the news release. At Ochsner Health in New Orleans, patients have used Emmie to reschedule more than 14,900 appointments, saving nearly 750 hours of staff time, Epic said.
- The company is also introducing Ask Emmie, a conversational AI assistant in the MyChart patient portal that answers patient health questions using information from their medical record. Sutter Health in Sacramento, Calif., is the first organization to deploy the tool to a limited group of users, with broader availability planned in the coming weeks, according to the news release.
- Epic said it plans to continue expanding AI capabilities across clinical and operational workflows, including tools that surface clinical insights during visits and assist with differential diagnosis.
- The company is also developing a set of medical AI models called Curiosity, trained on anonymized patient records to help predict outcomes across diagnoses, medications and procedures, according to the news release.
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