Our Take: Epic shines a spotlight on generative AI projects at annual Users Group Meeting

Epic shines a spotlight on generative AI projects at annual Users Group Meeting

As anticipated, Epic Systems confirmed at the company’s annual Users Group Meeting (UGM) in Verona, Wisconsin, this past week that it will roll out its own ambient scribe, and there were plenty of intriguing updates on other projects in the works — including clinical decision support technology that has the potential to transform health care delivery.  

CEO Judy Faulkner said the company is working on somewhere between 160 and 200 projects that incorporate artificial intelligence.

“We are combining the intelligence and curiosity of the human being with the investigative capabilities of gen AI. … Instead of calling it artificial intelligence, we’re calling it health intelligence. We think these [projects] are going to make significant changes,” she said.

Among the projects Epic has in development are three generative AI tools called Art, Emmie, and Penny.

Art, a comprehensive clinical AI assistant for clinicians, will include the ambient documentation feature as part of Epic’s AI Charting capability, which the company is developing in collaboration with Microsoft and expects to have ready for limited use by early next year.

Clinicians will use Epic’s Haiku and Canto apps to record conversations during patient visits. Microsoft’s Dragon ambient AI technology will transcribe and “diarize” the recording, Faulkner said, and then a combination of Microsoft and Epic note components will create “the best final note.”

Customers will be able to license the AI Charting tool from Epic, Faulkner noted, and can use “other third parties to do ambient AI, as they do today.”

Art will also be able to offer clinicians diagnostic insights, assist them in preparing for upcoming patient visits, and help them find patients with similar diseases through Epic’s massive deidentified patient database called Cosmos.

Emmie is a chatbot Epic is developing for patients. Emmie will be able to help patients schedule and prepare for visits, suggest screenings they can discuss with their physicians, and answer questions about lab results and general health matters.

Penny is a virtual assistant for revenue cycle management and other administrative tasks, such as making coding suggestions and generating appeal letters for claim denials. Some of Penny’s capabilities are already live.

One of the more forward-looking uses of AI that Faulkner and others talked about at this year’s UGM is a set of foundational models the company is building based on the Cosmos analytics platform.

The Cosmos dataset includes “medical events from deidentified longitudinal health records for 16.3 billion encounters over 300 million unique patient records,” according to Epic.  

Cosmos Medical Event Transformer (CoMET) models are being tested for their ability to identify patterns in how illnesses progress, which could be used to help clinicians with diagnoses. The models may also eventually be able to predict a timeline of potential medical events for a given patient, such as whether the patient is at risk for readmission or a cardiac event.

Researchers at Epic, Microsoft, and Yale School of Medicine just published a report on the CoMET models titled “Generative Medical Event Models Improve with Scale.”  

Two other major projects discussed at the meeting were Epic Ops — a suite of integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that includes workforce management, supply chain, and financial modules — and an end-to-end clinical trials management system, which Epic anticipates having available to early adopters by the end of next year.

A feature that’s already live in Madison, near Epic’s headquarters, is MyChart Central, which allows patients to combine all of the MyChart logins they have for various providers into a single login that will give them access to all of their MyChart data. Patients can also use the login to change certain information once (for instance, their address) and have it updated across all of their providers. Epic plans to roll out MyChart Central in November.

At the end of last year, Epic had the largest share of the EHR market, with 42% of acute care hospitals using Epic’s EHR software, according to a report by KLAS. Oracle placed a distant second on the list, at 23%.

Faulkner, who is 82, recently turned down a $30 billion offer from Health Data Atlas to acquire Epic. She confirmed to CNBC recently that a succession plan is in place to ensure the company will continue to be privately held.  

Health Care Rounds #187: Alan Pannier, SVP, SmithRx

Pharmacy benefit managers play a pivotal role in drug pricing, yet their practices often remain shrouded in a black box of rebates, spread pricing, and misaligned incentives. In this installment of our Pharma Series, Alan Pannier, SVP of Product Strategy at SmithRx, breaks down how legacy PBMs use opaque contracts and vertical integration to drive up costs, why employers are beginning to push back, and how transparent, cost-based models are reshaping the future of pharmacy benefits. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch the episode on YouTube. And if you liked what you heard, please rate and review — that will help more like-minded people find us!

What else you need to know

A UnitedHealth Group subsidiary acquired U.S, Digestive Health, a large gastroenterology physician group practice based in Exton, Pa., The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week. The transaction between SCA Health — which became part of UnitedHealth’s Optum subsidiary in 2017 through a separate acquisition — and private equity firm Amulet Capital Partners occurred in late January without an announcement, according to the Inquirer; the report noted that UnitedHealth confirmed the transaction but did not disclose the amount paid. U.S. Digestive Health was established in 2019 through the consolidation of three regional physician groups, with financial backing from Amulet Capital, according to the report. U.S. Digestive Health’s website says the practice has more than 250 GI providers, over 40 locations, and 24 ambulatory surgery centers in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

In collaboration with GoodRx, Novo Nordisk is offering Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide) to eligible self-paying patients at a cost of $499 per month, considerably less than the $998 list price for Ozempic and the $1,349 list price for Wegovy. Eligible patients can use GoodRx to self-pay for the drugs at more than 70,000 retail pharmacies nationwide, according to the announcement.

In separate news, Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy is the first GLP-1 to be approved by the FDA as a treatment for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a severe form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease previously referred to as NASH, in adults with moderate to advanced fibrosis. The accelerated approval is based on interim Phase III trial results that must be confirmed in the second part of the 240-week trial. Wegovy is the second drug to receive FDA approval for MASH; Madrigal Pharmaceuticals’ Rezdiffra (resmetirom) was approved in March 2024. It is the third approved indication for Wegovy, which was approved in 2021 for obesity and in 2024 for reducing the risk of major cardiovascular events in adults with known heart disease who also are overweight or have obesity.

The Vaccine Integrity Project held a public meeting online Tuesday to review data from recent studies of vaccines for COVID-19, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus, Axios reported. The purpose of the meeting, according to Axios, was to provide an evidence base for physicians and public health officials for use in updating recommendations for children, pregnant women, and immunocompromised individuals. The panel found that the vaccines continue to be safe for these patient populations. The Vaccine Integrity Project was formed in April by physicians and researchers with the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota as an initiative to safeguard vaccine use in the U.S. Michael Osterholm, CIDRAP’s director, said, “Over the last few months, we’ve seen policy changes by federal officials based on evidence that has been shown as flawed, analytically fraught, or flat-out wrong. … It’s vital that providers and the public continue to have vaccine information they can rely on.”

Separately, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published its own immunization guidelines on Tuesday, including recommendations for influenza, COVID-19, and RSV vaccinations that diverge from the recent recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). In its press release, AAP remarked that some of the new ACIP panel members Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. chose to replace the 17 ACIP experts he fired in May “have a history of spreading vaccine misinformation.” The CDC no longer recommends COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children (or healthy pregnant women), but the AAP recommends a COVID-19 vaccine for all children ages 6 through 23 months unless they have a known allergy to the vaccine’s ingredients, noting that this age group is “at the highest risk for severe COVID-19.” The association also recommends a single dose for at-risk children and teens, ages 2 through 18 years, and recommends availability of the vaccine for other children whose parents want them protected against COVID-19. Kennedy’s office pushed back against the association’s recommendations, saying, “the AAP is putting commercial interests ahead of public health and politics above America’s children.”

The American Medical Association (AMA) released a toolkit health systems can use in developing artificial intelligence policies. Dr. Margaret Lozovatsky, the AMA’s chief information officer, said in a press release, “Setting up an appropriate governance structure now is more important than it’s ever been because we’ve never seen such quick rates of adoption.” Called Governance for Augmented Intelligence, the toolkit is an eight-step guide to establishing a governance framework to implement, manage, and scale AI solutions. It was developed in collaboration with Manatt Health.

Providence hospitals in California are suing Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, alleging it underpaid for out-of-network emergency care and post-stabilization care provided to plan members, Becker’s Payer Issues reported. The complaint was filed in April. A judge recently denied Kaiser’s request to split the case, which involves 10 hospitals in different geographic regions, into separate lawsuits. The hospitals say that because they have no written contracts with Kaiser specifying discounted payment rates, Kaiser must pay the full amount billed or the reasonable and customary value for services. They allege that Kaiser has paid arbitrarily reduced amounts, and at times nothing at all. Over the last three years, the disputed claims have totaled tens of millions of dollars, according to Providence. In a lengthy statement shared with Becker’s, Kaiser Permanente said, “Our approach fully meets [California’s] requirements for determining a reasonable amount to pay. … An objective assessment shows that our payments are more than what Providence typically accepts from others.”

Bayada Home Health Care has begun a search for its next CEO, who will be the first non-family member to lead the 50-year-old business, according to the announcement. After the new CEO is appointed, David Baiada, the nonprofit organization’s CEO for the last eight years, will serve as an adviser during the transition and become a member of the board. David is the son of Mark Baiada, who founded Bayada Home Health Care and serves as board chair.

What we’re reading

The Two-Word Phrase Unleashing Chaos at the NIH. The Atlantic, 7.19.25

The ACPT: Why We Have It And Four Ways To Improve It. Health Affairs, 7.21.25

Regulating Private Equity in Health Care — The Massachusetts Model. NEJM, 7.16.25 (registration required)

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