Epic Systems Corp. and Microsoft Corp have announced a partnership to embrace generative artificial intelligence (AI) within their electronic healthcare records (EHR). With the Microsoft Azure AI platform, Epic will integrate OpenAI LP services such as GTP-4 in order to increase the productivity of healthcare providers.
OpenAI services offer the use of many generative AI models that can be applied to a wide variety of use cases such as content summarization and code generation. For example, the integration of AI into Epic’s self-service reporting tool SlicerDicer will help physicians to explore their hunches about medical problems in a more intuitive and conversational manner. AI can also be used by managers to gain understanding about the operational efficiency of their hospitals.
Microsoft corporate vice president of AI platform, Eric Boyd said that generative AI can help to empower healthcare firms by automating complex workflows, mundane tasks and provide improved insights from healthcare records. This helps clinicians to make informed decisions and deliver personalised care.
UW Health’s Chief Information Officer Chero Goswami commented that a good use of technology simplifies workforce and workflow, hence integrating AI into their daily tasks will increase productivity for many of the providers.
This collaboration between Microsoft and Epic might eventually see OpenAI being used by thousands of healthcare providers in the United States. Epic is the largest provider of healthcare software in the US, with a market share of 32.9% according to KLAS Research. Microsoft has already been developing generative AI in other ways such as Nuance Communications, owned by Microsoft, with plans to integrate GPT-4 into its clinical notetaking tools.
Epic Systems Corp is a healthcare software company which was formed in 1979 in Wisconsin, USA. It offers software tools to manage patient information in hospitals, physician office and other healthcare organizations. The company’s electronic medical record system helps to streamline healthcare providers’ processes and enable collaboration between different healthcare teams.
Eric Boyd, is the Corporate Vice President of AI Platform in Microsoft. Boyd is responsible for the commercial success of AI technologies. He leads the AI platform team to deliver AI services, tools and products for organisations of all sizes to build, customize and integrate their own AI capabilities into applications and products. Boyd has also devised strategies to focus investments and research on new emerging markets and technologies.
