Larry Ellison’s case against the modern EHR starts with a broken leg.
During his Oct. 27 keynote at Oracle AI World in Las Vegas, the Oracle co-founder, executive chair and chief technology officer pitched Oracle Health’s AI-based software to hospitals that already run Epic’s EHR. He also took on the way clinicians use EHRs at all, beginning with a story from Stanford.
“I tell this anecdote all the time. But my son got a broken leg. We rushed off to the hospital. The doctor wanted to show me the X-rays, and the doctor was at Stanford University,” Mr. Ellison said. “And the doctor tried to show me the X-rays, and he’s an orthopedic surgeon. … He couldn’t get the X-rays out of the system, so he called the radiologist. Radiologist came in. She tried to get the X-rays out of the system. Couldn’t do it.”
“The radiologist then called a system specialist,” he said. “They were navigating through all these computer pages. They’re trying to find Larry Ellison’s son’s latest X-rays. His name is Zeke. Latest X-rays. And finally, they got to call the systems expert, and he came in, and he was able to find the X-rays.
“This is ridiculous. This is the way you should find Larry Ellison’s or Zeke Ellison’s latest X-rays. ‘Show me Zeke Ellison’s latest X-rays.’ If you can ask a question describing what you want to see, you should then immediately see it,” he said. “Any other user interface is nonsense, but you have to have AI to deliver that, to understand the question, to navigate the screens for you transparently and show you what you want.”
Then he turned to orders.
“‘Increase the metoprolol dosage from 25 milligrams to 50 milligrams.’ OK, it will repeat back. ‘I’m increasing the dosage.’ It will go into the ER notes, and the doctor will get a summary of all the prescriptions the doctor issued at that consultation,” Mr. Ellison said. “But there should be no navigation of graphical screens in doing any of this.”
“If you can speak English and say what you want to see, you should then immediately see it. There should be no training required to use any of these applications,” he said. “Now you have to train to be a doctor. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes the question is very complex, and you have to train to be a doctor, and you have to train to be an accountant, and you have to train to be a lawyer. But once you can ask the question, you should get the answer.”
Later in the keynote, he returned to the theme with an analogy.
“But by the way, the user interface is also stunning. If you look at that versus a traditional graphical user interface, where you have to navigate your own screens, it’s the difference between telling your car to take me to this address and getting in and driving,” Mr. Ellison said.
The same thinking applies to signing in.
“Now we have incredible authentication. In other words, the logins are all biometric. We recognize your voice, we recognize your index fingerprint. We recognize your face, so it’s very secure,” he said.
Mr. Ellison has used the X-ray example before. On a September 2024 earnings call, he described Oracle Health’s interface with his own imaging.
“Our user interface is so different than Epic,” he said on that call. “This is how you find the X-rays for Larry Ellison. You say, ‘Oracle, please show me Larry Ellison’s latest X-ray.’ It’s a voice interface. You just ask for them.”
In September, at the Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit in Orlando, Fla., he made a related point about documentation.
“We shouldn’t have doctors sitting behind keyboards typing in and updating their electronic health records,” Mr. Ellison said.
The pitch comes as Oracle Health trails Epic in the hospital market. Epic held 43.7% of the acute care hospital EHR market at the end of 2025, compared with 21.9% for Oracle Health, according to KLAS Research data reported by Becker’s.
Epic has offered its own voice assistant, Hey Epic, for years.
“This feature was released in 2018 in the U.S., but we broadened it to organizations outside of the U.S. in 2025,” an Epic spokesperson told Becker’s in May.
Epic is also expanding its AI. It is developing an AI agent-building platform, Agent Factory, with 120 out-of-the-box AI features, and summaries generated by Art, its AI assistant for clinicians, are in use at more than 300 organizations, Becker’s reported from Epic’s Users Group Meeting in August.
Becker’s has reached out to Oracle Health for comment and will update this story if more information becomes available.
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