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Epic this week released its integrated AI Charting tool for all electronic health record customers.
The technology follows on the heels of the Art for Clinicians suite of AI tools, first unveiled at the EHR giant's summer users group meeting. Its functionality allows doctors to personalize real-time clinical notes and voice-command formatting.
Where Art for Clinicians generates pre-visit summaries and real-time clinical notes and takes on tasks like verifying prior authorization requirements, this week's release – one of many agentic AI announcements from health IT vendors – brings doctors on Epic the chance to personalize their AI Charting experiences in Art.
Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin was the first healthcare organization to adopt the new features, Epic said. Doctors there said the AI Charting tool is helping them better connect with patients during visits.
"This technology fundamentally changes the experience of a healthcare visit," Dr. Chris Kastman, the practice's chief medical officer, said in a statement from Epic on Monday.
"AI Charting supports our providers behind the scenes so they can focus on what matters most, including listening to their patients, building trust and making shared decisions together."
Improving healthcare experiences
With AI Charting, Epic generates medical records updates at scale. The initial release also allows clinicians to personalize inputs using voice commands, such as asking to format notes about a present illness as a bulleted list, Epic said on Wednesday.
Since Art for Clinicians was introduced, doctors' reliance on it is growing, the company said. Since November, Art Insights, which generates patient summaries from their medical records, has been used 16 million times each month.
While Epic brings Microsoft's core Dragon ambient AI technology into Art, the company has been working directly with physicians to fine-tune functionality in the EHR.
"Feedback has been very positive, and we’re iterating quickly based on what clinicians tell us works best," Corey Miller, Epic's vice president of R&D, said in the company's announcement about the AI Charting rollout.
Epic also highlighted the advantages of AI agents built for patients and revenue cycle teams for automated billing and patient inquiries.
The company's automated billing and coding agent, Penny, is helping organizations reduce coding-related denials by 20% and create medical necessity denial appeals 23% faster, Epic said. More than 200 organizations are using it.
Emmie, a conversational AI assistant within the MyChart patient portal, is helping Epic providers reduce strain on their billing offices. One provider organization saw a 48% reduction in billing-related messages in the first few weeks after going live, the EHR vendor said in a recent post on its website.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
