What You Should Know
- The Launch: Epic has officially released AI Charting, a native feature that listens to patient visits and automatically drafts notes and orders. This is part of a broader suite called Art (for clinicians), Penny (for revenue cycle), and Emmie (for patients).
- The Integration: Unlike third-party tools that require separate logins or data bridges, Epic’s AI is “built-in.” It draws context from the entire medical record to draft notes and allows clinicians to format them via voice commands (e.g., “Make this a bulleted list”).
- The Market Shakeout: This move creates an existential threat for standalone “point solutions” like Abridge, Ambience, and Nabla. With Epic offering a “good enough” native alternative that is likely cheaper and safer for IT teams, health systems may pause or cancel contracts with external vendors.
The “Native” Advantage
The pitch for Epic’s AI Charting is integration. Third-party scribes often exist as a “sidecar”—an app running on a phone or a separate window. They can be brilliant, but they are ultimately guests in the house.
Epic’s solution is the house. Because it is native, AI Charting draws from the patient’s entire historical record to inform the note. It allows clinicians to use voice commands to structure data instantly (“format the history of present illness as a bulleted list”) and, crucially, it queues up orders. This “listening-to-action” workflow is much harder for third-party tools to execute safely without deep, expensive integrations.
“Feedback has been very positive, and we’re iterating quickly based on what clinicians tell us works best,” said Corey Miller, Vice President of R&D at Epic.
Ambient AI Market Implications
In the tech world, to be “Sherlocked” is to have Apple release a free feature that destroys your paid app business. Epic may be doing the same to the ambient AI market.
For CIOs and Health System leaders, the focus has just shifted:
- Cost: Why pay for a separate ambient AI contract (often costing millions) if you already pay Epic for a similar capability?
- Security: Native tools eliminate the need to send patient audio to a third-party cloud, reducing the cybersecurity surface area.
- Simplicity: One less vendor means one less contract to manage.
This puts immense pressure on standalone players like Abridge and Ambience. To survive, they must prove that their AI is not just marginally better than Epic’s, but radically better—capable of handling complex specialties or offering workflow magic that Epic’s generalist tool cannot match.
Beyond the Scribe: Penny and Emmie
Epic’s announcement wasn’t limited to the exam room. The company is deploying a “full stack” AI strategy:
- Penny (Operations): Automates revenue cycle tasks. Over 200 organizations are using Penny to automate coding, seeing a 20% reduction in denials.
- Emmie (Patients): A conversational AI for MyChart that helps patients pay bills and schedule appointments, escalating to humans only when necessary.
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