Epic Announces Integration for Generative AI Clinical Documentation

EHR vendor Epic has announced a collaboration with health IT vendor Abridge to support generative AI clinical documentation workflows.

The collaboration will make Abridge’s generative AI-based documentation solution available for Epic EHR integration, allowing providers to generate real-time, structured summaries of patient conversations to reduce time spent on EHR documentation.

Abridge is the first health IT vendor in Epic’s Partners and Pals program. 

“The Partners and Pals program creates new value for healthcare by curating unique collaborations,” Alan Hutchison, vice president at Epic, said in a press release. “Epic works with companies like Abridge to develop deep integration for their products and services, helping them innovate quickly for the benefit of more patients and providers.”

Emory Healthcare, an academic health system in Georgia, recently announced an enterprise-wide agreement to make Abridge’s Epic-integrated generative AI solution available over the next three years.

“From mouse clicks and flowsheet rows to direct dialogue with patients, Emory’s deep collaboration with Abridge will help providers focus on the patient and better capture patients’ needs while simultaneously removing administrative burden,” said Alistair Erskine, MD, MBA, Emory’s chief information and digital officer.

“It is important to Emory that near instant conversion of conversations to clinical notes is completely integrated into the Epic experience, which extends beyond physicians to nurses and other members of the care team since the administrative burden is broadly shared amongst all of us,” Erskine said.

The University of Kansas Health System and UPMC have also implemented Abridge technology and Epic workflow integrations.

According to a March 2023 KLAS research report, the healthcare industry is moving towards front-end speech recognition as the go-to clinical documentation platform.

Interviewed healthcare organizations that leverage ambient speech recognition tools noted that the technology has improved over the last few years. Organizations noted advances in accuracy and ability to detect accents to the point that it is on par with the precision of transcription services.

The report found that the variety of platform types is another selling point for speech recognition technology. Often, providers can use their mobile phones to capture dictation and review notes.

The report authors noted that the biggest challenge with front-end speech recognition may be its price. Respondents mentioned nickel-and-diming on top of what is already considered an expensive system.