New EHR generative AI by Microsoft, Epic currently being piloted

Editor's Note

On April 17, electronic health records (EHR) vendor Epic and Microsoft announced a partnership to train Azure OpenAI on a large collection of information so it can “asynchronously draft responses to patient messages for providers,” Becker’s Health IT May 25 reports.

According to Becker's, there are four major health systems that are set to pilot this new technology. For one of the piloting health systems, the OpenAI tool will start with drafting a small subset of "more administrative" type messages, after which physicians will be able to accept the AI's suggestions or write their own. In a nutshell, OpenAI is being designed to help physicians respond to patients' questions in online portals.

Here are the four health systems piloting OpenAI:

• UNC Health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The health system announced on May 23 that it would begin piloting the new tool with five to 10 physicians.
• UC San Diego Health. It is already at the beginning stages of its pilot with the new technology, and initial feedback from physicians and patients “has been positive,” even though “it will take 2 to 3 more months to assess if the tool can actually deliver on its promises.”
• UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin. It was one of the first health systems to join the pilot.
• Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, California. It is another health system that has already started using the tool to automatically draft message responses.