STAT+: Epic’s AI overhaul promises to address EHR headaches for clinicians and patients

VERONA, Wisc. — Epic CEO Judy Faulkner took to the stage at the company’s sci-fi-themed annual customer meeting Tuesday in a lavender wig, bright green glasses, and silver pants. In the spirit of “making science fiction science fact,” she announced several new artificial intelligence features the electronic health records system giant will be integrating into its software.

New additions introduced by Faulkner and others include an AI scribe powered by Microsoft to rival products from health tech unicorns like Abridge, and AI assistants targeted at doctors, patients, and administrative staff. The updates promise to address common headaches like the hours doctors spend on clinical documentation and the difficulty patients face getting answers about their care.

With more than 40% of the EHR market for hospitals, Epic’s approach to AI reflects its dominance. It kept a relatively low profile while others raced to edge out the competition with announcements for back-office coding tools, physician co-pilots, armies of voice AI agents, and more. Second largest EHR vendor Oracle Health has for almost a year touted a refreshed “AI-native” EHR, reupping its announcement ahead of Epic’s annual meeting. On Monday, AI scribe platform Ambience announced a new Epic-specific EHR navigation AI agent built on OpenAI’s new GPT-5 large language model.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…