Check out your Company Bowl for anonymous work chats.
Our new, open-source AI Trust and Assurance Suite gives organizations the ability to deploy AI with confidence, monitor it continuously, and help ensure that it works for all patients. The tool is available for free on GitHub so that organizations can use the platform to monitor all of their AI tools—including custom models and those developed by other vendors. Corey Miller, an R&D leader at Epic, caught up with Healthcare IT News to provide a deeper dive on the Trust and Assurance Suite. Mark Sendak (population health and data science lead at Duke Institute for Health Innovation) and Brian Patterson (UW Health’s medical informatics director for predictive analytics and AI) join to share how their institutions have worked with us to test the suite and develop a standardized language for AI validation.
Everyone loves campus when spring’s in bloom – including this duo, who we found relaxing on a patio.
Our hometown is great for many reasons. Count ultimate frisbee among them. Ultimate has thrived in Madison since the early 90’s, and—as we now know—we’ve played a small role in its growth 😊 “Evidently, Epic brings liberal arts-type people who also play frisbee,” said Avery Johnson, an assistant coach of the men’s team at UW-Madison. “They bring a lot of other knowledge that maybe wasn’t here before, a lot of different ways of looking at systems and how you play. I think it really helps us grow.” PS – rumor has it that STEM students like frisbee too 😉
Our friends at Rochester Regional Health provide a great example of how nursing informatics teams can help their colleagues embrace new technology. RRH's nurse informaticists recently helped implement Rover, Epic's mobile app for nurses, so that nurses can complete their work on the go, without mobile workstations or trips to a centrally located computer. “Previously, when they would have to go back to a computer to document everything they just did, they would break out their piece of paper that they wrote all their stuff on and it could take about an hour,” said Joe Collins, RN, MBA, nurse informaticist at RRH. “With Rover, we have seen a decrease all the way down to five to six minutes.” Congrats, folks! Read more below:
For two weeks, the little town of Verona, Wisconsin had thousands more Xperts running around than usual. Congratulations to everyone who helped make this year’s XGM great! We found your thoughtful presentations and enthusiasm about healthcare electrifying. We’re still wired.
Have you heard the story of industrial espionage at Epic? Judy tells the story best. “Early in Epic’s life, when we still resided in the basement of an apartment house, we hired someone who had worked at a Midwest IT company that was known for its ambulatory care practice management software. We’ll call him Bob. Bob seemed like a very knowledgeable guy and commented that his previous organization was puzzled over why customers like Epic so much. "From the start there were a lot of strange things—for example, he didn’t sign up for health insurance or other things that new staff always do, and his wife didn’t seem to have any plans to join him in Madison. “One evening, the facility manager for the apartment house called me at home to tell me that Bob was going through every file cabinet in the company and photocopying everything. On the last day of the month, when we came into the office, Bob’s desk was completely empty and there was no note or word from him. He had disappeared...” Read more at the link below:
Providing equitable healthcare starts with identifying each patients’ barriers to care. Houston Methodist increased screening for social drivers of health from less than 1% to 37% of patients. To turn that information into actionable insights, Houston Methodist identified community-based organizations (CBOs) whose services aligned with patients’ most common needs, including the Houston Food Bank, The Council on Recovery, and the Houston Women’s Shelter. Houston Methodist gave these CBOs access to Epic’s Healthy Planet Link, a portal that offers secure access to select patient information, so that users at both ends can see which services have been requested and provided. This makes the referral process smoother for clinicians because they don’t need to worry about navigating an unfamiliar interface or submitting referrals on paper—the whole workflow takes place in Epic. Read more at the link below. Credit: Photo by Brandon Price, Mural by Gonzo247
When the snow melts away, it can feel like a new dawn here on campus. Happy spring, everyone. Even if it reached us a month late 😉
ICYMI: the folks at Health Data Management did an extended interview with Judy—and a host of other leaders at Epic—to discuss some of the foundational principles that make us who we are. They explore Judy’s business and leadership philosophy, Epic’s culture, our approach to customer success, and more. Check it out below.
By using generative AI to create first drafts of responses to patient messages, our friends at Mayo Clinic have saved a pilot group of nurses around 30 seconds per message. Nurses also noted the length and empathy of the generated messages—a quality of AI-generated text that researchers have noted as well. At Mayo, messages started from generated drafts tended to be longer and included more friendly, conversational language, which patients appreciate but nurses don’t always have time to include. After their initial pilot, Mayo Clinic plans to expand access to all LPNs and RNs by mid-2024. At that scale, they could save clinicians 1,500 hours per month. Released in early 2023, Augmented Response Technology (Art) is one Epic’s first tools to use OpenAI’s large language model, GPT. Congrats, folks! Read more below.
