Seth Hain, senior vice president of research and development at Epic
Photo: Epic
At the Open@Epic interoperability conference held on its Verona, Wisconsin, campus Thursday, Epic unveiled its plans for enhancing both patient-driven data connections and app developer support.
The vendor also told the nearly 1,000 healthcare data exchange experts in attendance about its continuing efforts to integrate data exchange standards, such as USCDI v5 and HL7 v2, into its tech stacks.
Seth Hain, Epic’s senior vice president of research and development, stressed the importance of collaboration with developers and "two-way learning" as he opened the event and said they were foundational to creating "thoughtful and efficient" data exchange.
"The goal here is to make it easy for everyone, from a health system onboarding a new physician to a payer to an app developer, to have a shared understanding of the relationships between providers, payers and other entities within that healthcare system in a consistent manner," said Hain.
Epic said its key announcements at the event centered on simplifying patient access and expanding developer capabilities.
Patient-initiated exchange
For patients, the nationwide rollout of MyChart Central, which began last month, allows individuals to consolidate their health data from multiple organizations into one account, said Hain.
Aimed at simplifying data sharing with patient applications and devices, having one MyChart account brings health data from multiple organizations together through built-in biometrics that allow patients to log in without memorizing their usernames and passwords.
Hain noted that there are 195 million patients currently using MyChart – his presentation showed that if MyChart were a country, it would be the eighth largest.
On the way is real-time, API-powered "blue dot wayfinding" in MyChart, which can help patients navigate to providers, expected to be released in November. Before the end of the year, Epic will also release APIs to help streamline the identity verification process in the portal, Hain said.
Epic also announced that its Bluetooth Generic Health Sensor specification is designed to make it easier for patients to connect home monitoring devices, such as blood pressure cuffs, directly to their medical records in MyChart.
Hain said the technology enables patients to provide their doctors with richer data. When the public specs for the Bluetooth settings are released later this year, patients could buy an enabled medical support device and launch into MyChart, where developers can connect it to providers' applications, "making it easier for patients to build out that kind of rich history for your applications."
More for Epic app developers
Other new data sharing features are now accessible through a redesigned Open@Epic website aimed at developers.
One of them is Epic's Clarity Data Model, which offers population-level data needs for artificial intelligence, analytics and population health applications.
In an effort to support developer onboarding, the new website introduces a new five-step guide and more than 40 developer playbooks, compiled learnings to help them excel and "avoid pitfalls."
An expanded self-service API catalog now contains expanded sandbox testing capabilities for self-service testing of API calls. The "Try It" button on the top right of each API page on the developer website enables users to immediately test inputs and understand how it works.
Hain said more than 800 data exchange technologies available to all developers power more than 2.04 billion patient data exchange transactions daily.
Some new FHIR APIs for prior authorization that could strengthen provider-payer communication, and a new set of Staff Duress APIs to improve clinical safety and address stress will also be released in February 2026, he added.
Epic is "hands down on keyboards" working to support USCDI v5, said Hain, which is intended to enhance the standardized exchange of information related to items like diagnostic images and advance directives and is preparing for HL7 v2 interfaces, which should be ready next year.
Finally, Epic's Showroom is a place where developers can showcase their innovations "in a trusted manner," Hain said, displaying examples of an UpToDate patient education integration and a Johns Hopkins Health System application for ordering meals while in the hospital.
