By Michael Millenson
Rocky health Writing of the group of epic users of this year He captured the artificial intelligence atmosphere with a play on the names of three new chatbots of AI implemented by the signing of dominant electronic health records of the country. “Epic Goes Ape (Art, Penny and Emmie),” the headline read, using the first letters of the chatbots names designed to, respectively, doctors, income cycle managers and patients.
Emmie does positive things for patients, more about that at the time, but in essence the chatbot is a B2B work, designed to address the needs of hospitals, medical slimming and others whose rates have built the company $ estimated in private.
Emmie is not an agent or patient autonomy. Its purpose is to help epic customers (health systems and medical practices) provide more and better services to its customers, the patient, provided that this patient remains a client.
That context is important. Yes, in a way it is #Patiënusai, but that use is analogous to the AI algorithms deployed by Netflix. While they can marvel at their personalization power, they will never tell you that the best film for your participating interest is presented in Hulu and, by the way, if you are watching tons of programs with medicinal topics, it is still a beating.
I was present at the meeting at the Epic headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin, but the news accounts and LinkedIn publications suggest that, as expected, for this type of meeting, there was more drama than details. Much of what was presented and hinted, the company said it is working on more than 200 AI applications, will be implemented within 2026 and beyond.
Mister Introduction of Epic of Emmie and Art From your LinkedIn account:
Informed by your graphic and connected devices, Emmie is designed to support patients between visits. Whether explain the results of the tests in easy to understand terms, suggestion of the next steps or guide patients through open conversations about their health, Emmie makes it easier for patients to keep abreast of the external image.
On the clinician side, Art is collecting Emmie data to obtain the doctor the information they need before the visit. Art is designed to reduce administrative load, help doctors better understand their patients and offer information informed by the context. This can take the way to generate summaries prior to the visit, take notes in real time and even take measures such as placing orders or verifying prior authorization requirements.
That rock health analysis He suggested that the real meaning “can be less the function and more the channel”, since consumers are much more willing to share health with their supplier, in this case through Mychart de Epic, than a technology company (as an AI provider). “By capturing the questions, decisions and verification of the patient’s symptoms,” said Rock Health, “observes the epic visibility in the information that consumers could doubt it to share with a general technology company. The EHR giant has already indicated that the data will do so [its] Tools. “
Or as Epic did No Let’s say: “We empower our customers. We empower patients. We empower ourselves.” Good intentions alone do not make your product use in more than half or all acute care hospital beds in the United States, according to a class estimate or market share.
Ate Healthcare It todayVeteran technology journalist John Lynn Olisquea the real schedule For all promised wonders of promised emmie. According to Lynn (presumable of epic itself),
- The dissemination and proactive images will arrive in March 2026
- Active commitment in November 2026
- Future projections arrive at some point in 2026 (the month is not given).
Invoice payment, programming skills using SMS (text messages) and a voice agent are “arriving in the future.”
While I commented on the Epic LinkedIn publication, “How about the results of the patient informed by the patient [e.g. Proteus Consortium’s]Either from an application linked to the epic (that is, as Twistle by Health Catalyst or others) or the patient’s own wearables? “I labeled Seth HainSenior Vice President of Research and Development of the EPIC, which played a prominent role in the meeting, but did not receive an answer. (To be fair, maybe a holiday time was taken after an intense less).
In a recent statistic, first opinion That touch of the issue of autonomy, I affirmed that the real informed consent means that doctors should be united to inform patients what Epic Cosmos system says about the probable results of treatment for people with their clinical profile. These predictions come from a database that is based on an amazing meetings of 15.7 billion patients. But Patients should be able to access that information about the results of different hospitals on their own.
At the user group meeting, Epic announced an additional refinement of Cosmos, with the founder and executive director Judy Faulkner proudly announcing that the company may “predict the future” for patients. (For deep immersion in the cosmos, I recommend the publications of Medical computer science expert Mark Braustin.
Faulkner did what any intelligent businessman would do. She talked about how the product of her company would allow an important segment of clients, doctors and health systems to provide better care. What do they do (or do they do) those customers for their “client”, the patient, with the epic software? Obviously “is not my job.”
Michael L. Millenson is president of health quality advisors and a regular THCB taxpayer. This first appeared in the “Patients use AI” replacing
