By MICHAEL MILLENSON
A Rock Well being write-up of this year’s Epic Users Group Meeting captured the bogus intelligence vibe with a play on the names of three new AI chatbots rolled out by the nation’s dominant digital well being document agency. “Epic Goes APE (Artwork, Penny and Emmie),” learn the headline, utilizing the primary letters of the names of chatbots designed for, respectively, clinicians, income cycle managers and sufferers.
Emmie does optimistic issues for sufferers – extra on that in second – however at its core the chatbot is a B2B play, designed to deal with the wants of the hospitals, medical teams and others whose charges have constructed the privately held EHR agency into an estimated $5 billion enterprise.
Emmie is just not an agent of affected person autonomy. Its function is to assist Epic prospects (well being methods and doctor practices) present extra and higher companies to their buyer, the affected person, so long as that affected person stays a buyer.
That context is essential. Sure, in a means it’s #PatientsUseAI, however that use is analogous to the AI algorithms deployed by Netflix. When you might marvel at their energy of personalization, they’re by no means going to let you know that the perfect film on your explicit curiosity is harbored over at Hulu and, by the way in which, even should you’re watching tons of applications with medical themes, you’re nonetheless a sofa potato.
I wasn’t current on the gathering at Epic’s Verona, Wisconsin headquarters, however information accounts and LinkedIn postings counsel that, unsurprisingly for this sort of assembly, there was extra drama than particulars. A lot of what was unveiled and hinted at – the corporate stated it’s engaged on greater than 200 AI functions – might be rolled out over the course of 2026 and past.
Right here’s Epic’s introduction of Emmie and Art from its LinkedIn account:
Knowledgeable by their chart and linked gadgets, Emmie is designed to help sufferers between visits. Whether or not it’s explaining take a look at ends in easy-to-understand phrases, suggesting subsequent steps, or guiding sufferers by means of open-ended conversations about their well being, Emmie makes it simpler for sufferers to remain on prime of their well being and stroll into the examination room with a transparent image.
On the clinician facet, Artwork is gathering knowledge from Emmie to get the physician the knowledge they want earlier than the go to even begins. Artwork is designed to scale back administrative burden, assist docs higher perceive their sufferers, and provide context-informed insights. This could take the type of producing pre-visit summaries, taking real-time notes, and even taking actions like putting orders or verifying prior authorization necessities.
That Rock Health analysis steered that the actual significance “could also be much less the perform and extra the channel,” since customers are much more keen to share well being knowledge with their supplier – on this case by means of Epic’s MyChart – than with a tech firm (resembling an AI vendor). “By capturing affected person questions, selections, and symptom-checking,” Rock Well being famous, “Epic positive factors visibility into info customers would possibly hesitate to share with a generalist tech firm. The EHR big has already signaled that this knowledge will feed again into [its] instruments.”
Or as Epic did not say, “We empower our prospects. We empower sufferers. We empower ourselves.” Good intentions alone don’t get your product into use by greater than half of all acute-care hospital beds in America, based on a KLAS estimate of market share.
At Healthcare IT In the present day, veteran tech journalist John Lynn sniffed out the actual schedule for all Emmie’s promised pro-patient wonders. In line with Lynn (presumably from Epic itself),
- proactive outreach and pictures is coming in March, 2026
- energetic engagement in November, 2026
- future screenings arrive someday in 2026 (no month given).
Invoice cost, scheduling skills utilizing SMS (texting) and a voice agent are all “coming sooner or later.”
As I commented on the Epic LinkedIn put up, “How about patient-reported consequence measures [e.g. Proteus Consortium’s], whether or not from an app linked to Epic (i.e., like Twistle by Well being Catalyst or others) or the affected person’s personal wearables?” I tagged Seth Hain, Epic’s senior vice chairman of analysis and improvement, who performed a outstanding function on the assembly, however acquired no reply. (To be honest, perhaps he took some trip time after an intense few weeks.)
In a recent STAT First Opinion that took up the subject of autonomy, I asserted that true knowledgeable consent means physicians ought to be obligated to tell sufferers what Epic’s Cosmos system says in regards to the probably outcomes of remedy for people with their scientific profile. These predictions come from a database drawing on a mind-boggling 15.7 billion affected person encounters. However sufferers ought to be capable to entry that details about totally different hospitals’ outcomes on their very own.
On the Customers Group Assembly, Epic introduced an additional refinement of Cosmos, with founder and chief government officer Judy Faulkner proudly saying that the corporate will be capable to “predict the longer term” for sufferers. (For a deep dive into Cosmos, I like to recommend the posts of veteran medical informatics expert Mark Braustein.)
Faulkner did what any sensible businessperson would do. She spoke about how her firm’s product would allow an essential section of shoppers, clinicians and well being methods, to offer higher care. What these prospects really do (or don’t do) for his or her “buyer,” the affected person, with the Epic software program? Evidently “Not my job.”
Michael L. Millenson is president of Well being High quality Advisors & an everyday THCB Contributor. This primary appeared within the “Patients use AI” Substack
