Microsoft and Epic are teaming up to harness the power of generative artificial intelligence to improve the accuracy and efficiency of electronic health records.

The partnership will integrate the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service with Epic's EHR platform – for example, extending natural language queries and interactive data analysis to Epic’s self-service reporting tool SlicerDicer.

The announcement expands a partnership between the EHR provider and Microsoft through which Epic environments can be deployed on the Azure cloud platform.

EHRs are an essential tool for healthcare providers, allowing them to quickly access and update patient information, but they can also be burdensome, time-consuming and prone to errors.

By leveraging AI algorithms to automatically fill in missing information, EHRs can become more complete, more accurate and easier to use, thus freeing up clinicians to focus on patient care.

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to generate new content, such as text, images and even entire websites.

In the context of EHRs, generative AI can be used to automatically fill in missing information, suggest diagnoses and even predict future health outcomes based on historical data.

Among the health systems already deploying the integrated systems are UC San Diego Health; UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin; and Stanford Health Care, which are leveraging Epic's new capabilities to automatically draft message responses.

"A good use of technology simplifies things related to workforce and workflow," UW Health Chief Information Officer Chero Goswami said in a statement. "Integrating generative AI into some of our daily workflows will increase productivity for many of our providers, allowing them to focus on the clinical duties that truly require their attention."

Microsoft and Epic are no strangers to the healthcare space. Microsoft has been developing solutions for healthcare for over a decade, while Epic has been a leading provider of EHRs for more than 40 years.

By combining their expertise, the companies aim to accelerate the adoption of generative AI in healthcare and improve patient outcomes.

Eric Boyd, corporate vice president, AI platform, for Microsoft, argued the challenges facing healthcare systems and their providers demand an integrated approach.

"Our expanded partnership builds on a long history of collaboration between Microsoft, Nuance and Epic, including our work to help healthcare organizations migrate their Epic environments to Azure," he said in a statement.

The potential benefits of generative AI for healthcare are significant. By automating tedious and error-prone tasks, clinicians can spend more time with patients and EHRs can become a valuable source of insights to improve care quality and reduce costs.

However, there are also potential risks associated with the use of generative AI in healthcare. For example, there is a risk of bias if the algorithms are trained on incomplete or biased datasets.

To mitigate these risks, Microsoft and Epic say they are committed to developing transparent and ethical AI solutions that are rigorously tested and validated. By leveraging the power of generative AI, healthcare providers aim to improve the accuracy and efficiency of EHRs, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes.

Generative AI is increasingly viewed as a potential copilot for multiple players in the healthcare space and is a key topic at this year's HIMSS conference, where potential use cases applied to business and clinical challenges – like clinician burnout and achieving interoperability – are being explored.

“Our exploration of OpenAI’s GPT-4 has shown the potential to increase the power and accessibility of self-service reporting through SlicerDicer, making it easier for healthcare organizations to identify operational improvements, including ways to reduce costs and to find answers to questions locally and in a broader context,” said Seth Hain, senior vice president of research and development at Epic, in a statement.

Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin.
Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com
Twitter: @dropdeaded209