Epic UGM 2025: Live Updates From Verona, Wisconsin
EHRs are also core to the provider and employee experience. They have arguably increased the reporting burden for doctors and nurses since their implementation. Health system leaders and EHR developers are tasked with making these necessary systems as user-friendly as possible so that clinicians can focus on patient care.
Epic Systems is currently the leading EHR vendor with a market share of more than 37 percent, according to Definitive Healthcare.
From August 18 through August 21, 2025, Epic is hosting health care executives, clinicians, IT professionals, partners and other industry stakeholders at its annual User Group Meeting (UGM).
Members of the media were invited to Epic's sprawling headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin, on August 19.
Follow Newsweek's live blog for updates throughout the day.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
7 hours ago
- Newsweek
Epic's Seth Hain on What We Know—And Don't Know—About Cosmos AI
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. This is a preview of Access Health—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. It started the moment that I stepped off the jet bridge in Madison, Wisconsin. And it only got crazier from there. A sign from Delta Air Lines welcomed attendees to "UGM," Epic's annual User Group Meeting at their sprawling headquarters in the nearby town of Verona. Ads from Qventus, Suki and other health tech companies scrolled across screens at the baggage claim. I opened my LinkedIn app, and my feed was inundated with predictions and opinions: What would Epic announce? What could they do? What couldn't they do? The first thing my Uber driver asked was, "Are you here for Epic?" He had been driving people to and from the conference all weekend. He hadn't been inside the complex yet, but he hoped to take a tour someday. Me, too. I was so busy typing out updates that I missed the campus tour organized for media (but a member of the team was kind enough to take me by the Harry Potter-themed buildings before I left for the day). I had spent the week before UGM on back-to-back phone calls, because—as my Uber driver illustrated—everyone has something to say about Epic. I won't use this intro to recount what Epic itself said, because if you're reading this, you've probably heard the chatter. They're coming out with MyChart Central, a suite of AI tools known as Art (for providers), Emmie (for patients) and Penny (for revenue cycle), complete with ambient technology from Microsoft, and getting into the ERP game. You can read more on my live blog from Tuesday or on Epic's social media feeds. The endless updates are fascinating, game-changing—and widely available. So instead of rehashing them here, I'll tell you what people are saying about them. First off, there has been widespread concern about how Epic's ambient scribing features will impact start-up companies that offer the same feature. On Tuesday, Epic CEO Judy Faulkner said that customers can continue using third-party scribing tools as they've been doing. Epic even reiterated this in a statement shared with media: "Customers can use other third parties to do Ambient AI as they do today." But the other third parties don't seem reassured by that promise. While customers do have a choice, it is difficult to envision a world in which they don't choose to maximize the benefits of their expensive Epic ecosystem. Epic's suite of AI tools will also be able to communicate with one another, offering a level of continuity that hasn't been achieved elsewhere. "I think it's really tough to go against Epic with something they do first party, because it's hard to compete on price and it's hard to compete on quality," Muthu Alagappan, CEO and co-founder of Counsel Health, told me. "In a competitive market, those are often two of your main dimensions for out-competing someone. Epic also has just much better native integrations with their own internal data, and so what they expose in an API to a third party, they're going to just have much cleaner, native access to the same data elements internally." Ahead of UGM, Dr. Joseph Sanford, chief clinical informatics officer at UAMS in Arkansas, said that his system is not considering an immediate shift to Epic's ambient scribing technology, since they're in the middle of a contract with Microsoft's Nuance. He told me that he hoped to see collaborations between Epic and Microsoft continue and serve as a "rising tide for all parties." When the time comes to reassess, Sanford will be considering each vendor's history in their space, how robust their toolset is and whether it meets UAMS' specialized needs. And, of course, he'll be reading the price tags. Despite Epic's solid reputation—it snagged 17 customers from competitor Cerner since UGM 2024—health system leaders aren't relying on blind trust. "As good as Epic is, when you're a software company, you're always starting something up," Sanford told me. "And so how much of the bleeding edge do we want to be on versus a kind of plug and play package?" The term "monopoly" has come up in several of my conversations. Epic is a monopoly, health tech leaders tell me, and it is expanding, as monopolies do. The concern is that monopolies do not always have the depth to match their breadth. As the saying goes: "Jack of all trades, master of none." It's a fair point, and one that can't be dismissed until these tools start rolling out early next year. However, Epic is not your average Jack. It has data from 325 million patients around the world and is used by 3,300 hospitals. Last year, it reported $5.7 billion in revenue. It has more than 12,000 employees who come to work five days a week on a 1,670-acre campus. It has doctors and software developers dressing up like Star Trek characters to explain AI models in space metaphors—and they had that 11,400-person auditorium on the edges of their seats. It is undeniable that they have creativity, customer loyalty and, most importantly, resources. Of all the announcements that came out of UGM, I find the advancements in Cosmos AI most illustrative of that scale, that differentiation. Epic has access to an absolute abyss of data. All of it can be used as fodder for AI models, and as their new research illustrates, those models are likely to grow stronger as the dataset grows bigger. I asked Seth Hain, Epic's senior vice president of research and development, to expand on the potential of Cosmos AI (read on to the "Pulse Check" section to hear what he said). I also asked him about the concerns I'd been hearing, that Epic may not be able to do it all and do it well. "When we think about what projects and development work to do, we focus first on that North Star: how do we help providers take very effective care of their patients and work together [with them] in that regard," Hain told me. "With that as a backdrop, it becomes a question of, given what folks use the software for today, where can we complement that in a meaningful way that works towards that North Star?" He continued, "I think the things we shared today are directly in line with that, and so we'll continue to focus on those capabilities that provide ongoing and increasing value to physicians and nurses and patients directly through MyChart and the hospital operations group, and increase the amount of functionality to help those folks. Where there's things we could do, but it doesn't complement that [North Star], then they're not the things for us to spend time on." In summary, the most interesting thing I heard was actually something I overheard from a fellow UGM attendee on the airport shuttle: "I can't imagine if you're on another shitty EMR how you keep up." I've asked around, but nobody seems to have an answer to that one. In Other News Major health care headlines from the week Could AI truly "re-humanize" health care? Drs. Ben Ebert and Eliezer Van Allen of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute believe so. They spoke with Marcus Weldon—our contributing editor for AI and the president emeritus of Bell Labs—for the most recent installment of Newsweek'sAI Impact interview explores Dana-Farber's plans for the first fully AI-enabled hospital, AI's potential to democratize health care and steps the industry must take to make these dreams a Epic UGM on Tuesday, President Sumit Rana said he spends "an hour a day" reading about AI. If you have time for one article today, I highly recommend Weldon's. They spoke with Marcus Weldon—our contributing editor for AI and the president emeritus of Bell Labs—for the most recent installment of Newsweek'sAI Impact interview explores Dana-Farber's AI's potential to democratize health care and steps the industry must take to make these dreams a Epic UGM on Tuesday, President Sumit Rana said he spends "an hour a day" reading about AI. CLEAR, widely known for its frictionless airport security system, has announced a partnership with Tampa General Hospital to improve workforce identity security. In a joint case study, the partners said that they had automated 80 percent of account recovery requests using CLEAR's technology, cut their MFA reset time from 4.5 days to 20 minutes and reduced account-related support calls by 22 percent. This resulted in operational savings of approximately $70 per password this month, CLEAR announced that its CLEAR1 product was under construction in Epic's Identity Verification for EpicCare Link Toolbox to bring these capabilities to more health care organizations. In a joint case study, the partners said that they had automated 80 percent of account recovery requests using CLEAR's technology, cut their MFA reset time from 4.5 days to 20 minutes and reduced account-related support calls by 22 percent. This resulted in operational savings of approximately $70 per password this month, CLEAR announced that its to bring these capabilities to more health care organizations. Grow Therapy launched an AI tool called "Between-Session Reflections" on Tuesday, joining a growing list of health care organizations that are utilizing AI to maintain contact with patients between visits. The tool allows therapy clients to log their thoughts and feelings between sessions. They can respond to targeted, AI-generated journaling prompts about recent experiences or opt for free-form writing. The AI then generates a list of key themes that the client can choose to edit, send to their provider or delete."Since most of life is happening outside of a session, a key aspect of therapy is knowing what to focus on in order to make each session as impactful as possible," Kevin Ramotar, director of clinical product at Grow Therapy, said in a news release. The tool allows therapy clients to log their thoughts and feelings between sessions. They can respond to targeted, AI-generated journaling prompts about recent experiences or opt for free-form writing. The AI then generates a list of key themes that the client can choose to edit, send to their provider or delete."Since most of life is happening outside of a session, a key aspect of therapy is knowing what to focus on in order to make each session as impactful as possible," Kevin Ramotar, director of clinical product at Grow Therapy, said in a news release. CMS has created an oversight initiative to ensure that Medicaid and CHIP enrollees meet citizenship agency said it will begin sending "monthly enrollment reports" to states, flagging enrollees whose immigration status could not be confirmed through federal will be responsible for obtaining any documentation necessary to confirm these enrollees' eligibility,and are expected to adjust coverage for those whom they cannot first set of reports was sent to some states on Tuesday, and all states will receive their reports over the course of a month, CMS said. Pulse Check Executive perspectives on key industry issues Seth Hain is the SVP of R&D at Epic. Seth Hain is the SVP of R&D at Epic. At UGM on Tuesday, Epic shared that its Cosmos AI technology had reached a "significant milestone." CoMET—a family of models built on de-identified, longitudinal health records from 118 million patients and 151 billion medical events—had outperformed or matched task-specific models when tested on 78 tasks, including prediction of diagnosis and disease prognosis. The model also improved with time, becoming more accurate as the scale of the dataset increased, according to a research report produced by Epic, Microsoft Research and Yale School of Medicine. In short: Epic's Cosmos dataset is advancing, and could eventually be able to predict health events across the course of a patient's lifetime. Imagine a world where doctors can anticipate a heart attack years before it happens, get a "nudge" with a patient's risk score and intervene early. That's starting to sound less like sci-fi and more like real life. I sat down with Seth Hain, Epic's senior vice president of research and development, to learn more about Cosmos' progress and what it could mean for patients and providers. Here's what he told me at UGM: At the general session this morning, you spoke about Cosmos AI and its progress. What can you tell me—off-stage—about the value this could bring to patients and health systems? There has been a challenge, historically, in regard to using artificial intelligence techniques in health care software, where the rate at which it was applied and available was determined by building these individual bespoke models, one at a time, for individual conditions. And the thing we were deeply wondering about was, is there a way to build a generalized medical intelligence that could be applied broadly to help patients, physicians and health systems? As we started studying the Cosmos AI models that we were creating, we found that they could be applied across that whole spectrum. Helping, say, a nurse with [procuring] a particular risk score in regard to patients that they might be monitoring on the floor of the hospital, is one simple application where it can be applied in place of one of those predictive models today—but across a far more diverse set of conditions, rather than building one for each individual condition. Similarly, in the exam room or in the office, [Cosmos could be] able to help identify differential diagnoses, and just having that kind of extra moment so the physician can wonder, "Did I think through all the options here, and is there anything else I can consider?" The system [could] help prompt that in ways. And then obviously, helping more broadly from a hospital and health system operations perspective, the first example I gave this morning was around length of stay. But we also talked about long-term risk of chronic diseases, as another example. And each of these help with everything from capacity in the hospital to helping manage populations of patients. So we see this one model—I mean, obviously we're going to build multiple models in the family, and they're going to grow over time—being able to generalize across all of those. I think at the same time, it's really early. We don't know everything this model can do. We don't know everything this approach can do. And the reason we wanted to make sure we shared it with the community today was to engage them in starting to explore it through the Cosmos AI Labs, because in the same way that we've learned so much from the researchers across the Cosmos community around the data set—they're generating two papers or more a week now from the from doing research in Cosmos—we expect a similar type of effort will come into understanding Cosmos AI, and they're going to help figure out a bunch of new ways to help patients and clinicians with it. So I'm really most excited about what we don't know yet and what the community will find. Are you thinking of Cosmos AI as a clinical decision support tool? I think it's very important to separate two things here. In a weird way, a model alone does nothing. The model needs to be embedded into workflow in order to assist doctors, nurses, hospital operations. And so this question of "Is it a clinical decision support tool?" etc. is really about "How does it surface in workflow?" not "Is it the thing?" And in that regard, we want to engage the community and continue to understand it more deeply, so that as it does surface in different parts of clinical workflows, they can have a deep understanding of it beforehand. And the paper we published with Yale was really driven around helping build up that understanding. Yale contributed heavily, particularly around the medical evaluations that are included in that paper. I'm curious if there are policy changes that will have to come with "risk scores" for certain conditions. For example, if a patient reaches "X" score, the payer and provider are obligated to respond in "Y" way. I think this is a very important question, and I think if we take it up one level above that, a generalized medical intelligence means that many questions can be asked quickly, and in some ways, our governance processes, our regulatory structures, implicitly assume that models take time to create, and that the number of them in use is going to be limited as a result. Cosmos AI points away towards a future where there could be many, many predictions on many different fronts, almost generated as quickly as the mind might ask the question. And so I do think it'll be important to engage the federal and state level, as well as obviously working closely with the Epic community to think through how those policies can evolve. C-Suite Shuffles Where health care leaders are coming and going Veradigm has tapped former Cerner President Don Trigg as its CEO. He held full profit and loss and operational responsibility of Cerner's business groups—including their EHR—before leaving in 2021. Most recently, Trigg was CEO of apree health, a primary care company that Elevance Health acquired last year. He'll take the helm at Veradigm on September 2. Most recently, Trigg was CEO of apree health, a primary care company that Elevance Health acquired last year. He'll take the helm at Veradigm on September 2. David Baiada is stepping down from his position as CEO of BAYADA Home Health Care, the international company announced Tuesday. Baiada will be taking on a new role on the company's board of directors. BAYADA has launched a search for the first non-family member to lead the company since its founding in 1975. Christina Slemp is joining UNC Health as system vice president of revenue cycle – financial services. She comes to the Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based system from Community Health Systems (CHS), where she has worked as vice president of revenue cycle since 2012. Executive Edge How health care execs are managing their own health Dr. Tom Frieden is the president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, and former director of the CDC. Dr. Tom Frieden is the president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, and former director of the CDC. Resolve to Save Lives Earlier this month, I connected with Dr. Tom Frieden. He's had quite the career in public health, serving as New York City health commissioner from 2002 to 2009, CDC director from 2009 to 2017 and now as president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative he started to prevent cardiovascular disease and epidemics. He is also publishing a book, The Formula for Better Health, on September 20 via MIT Press. It contains a blueprint for effective leadership in complex industries like health care, arguing that better leaders will bring results—not more bureaucracy. The book also contains some insights on health, naturally. I asked Frieden what he prioritizes to keep himself healthy. Here's what he told me (and what the data told him): "What really became clear to me is there are six core behaviors to stay healthy, and then there are a handful of others that may be helpful to reduce illness, injury, disability and death. But the six big ones are (1.) blood pressure. And you know, the SPRINT trial is pretty clear: [a systolic blood pressure of] 120 is a lot better than 130 is better than 140. And (2.) lipids and apolipoprotein B (APOB), we have way too little focus on this. I have a buddy I play squash with, I'm playing him this afternoon. He's 72 [years old] and he's got bad luck. His genes are such that his lipids are really high, and he does everything right. His diet is incredibly healthy. He gets lots of physical activity and he's seeing cardiologists. His blood pressure is 130 and his APOB is 90. Well he can reduce his risk of a heart attack, stroke or death by at least a third, just by tightening control of those two numbers. The third is (3.) physical activity. And this is the wonder drug. It improves everything you'd like to improve. The fourth is (4.) healthy nutrition, especially cutting out sugar and having more potassium than sodium. Other nutrition stuff is complicated. The fifth is (5). getting enough sleep. And the sixth is (6.) avoiding toxins, including alcohol, tobacco and other drugs and avoiding some of the toxins in our environment. There are other things that can be done as people age to prevent dementia and loss of functionality, from fully correcting hearing and vision to getting colon cancer screening. There's interesting new evidence that the shingles vaccine may prevent dementia that I review in the data [presented in the book]. There is this whole idea of technical rigor: how can we see the health of the future? This is a skill from public health, and it's something that's often lacking in clinical medicine, a kind of critical analysis of what the data really shows." This is a preview of Access Health—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
Politico
8 hours ago
- Politico
Epic chatbots
EXAM ROOM This week, electronic health record giant Epic unveiled a bevy of new bots designed to help patients understand their health and support doctors and administrators by automating some of their routine, lower-level tasks. Dr. Chris Longhurst, chief medical and digital officer at UC San Diego Health, told Ruth he sees a lot of potential in Emmie, Epic's artificial intelligence chatbot that can answer patients' questions about their test results uploaded in Epic's proprietary health record mobile app, MyChart. 'It's going to be a game changer,' he said. Longhurst conducted a clinical trial, which was approved by a committee that ensures human subjects are treated ethically, where 150 patients chatted with Emmie about their medical results. The study will be submitted for peer review and publication in a journal, but he said preliminary results were positive. Notably, he said, people seemed to like Emmie. He also said people with less education tended to rate their experience with Emmie more highly than their more educated peers. Why it matters: Studies suggest that people with college degrees live healthier, longer lives compared to those without a high school diploma. Health disparities have existed along social lines for decades and efforts to give Americans with less education better access to health care have historically been difficult. While Emmie might not be able to connect patients with more care, Longhurst said the bot can go a long way toward helping less-educated patients understand their own health status and the care they receive. 'It may not bridge the digital divide, but it could bridge the medical divide,' he said. Liability concerns: Despite Emmie's capacity to engage patients, Longhurst thinks adoption will be slow partly because health systems have to carefully decide how they incorporate chatbots into patient care. For example, how and where should health systems disclose to patients that they're talking with a bot? Health systems must also thoroughly test Emmie to ensure the chatbot doesn't serve up wrong information. They must also decide who's liable if Emmie gives patients incorrect information. Still, Longhurst thinks that in the long term having a chatbot explain medical results will become the standard of care: 'If people are finding value out of pasting their [medical information] into ChatGPT, why wouldn't they do that here?' WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. A New York State Health Department employee has been put on leave after being charged with harassing the family of the late UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. He is accused of sending the family threatening messages. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@ Ruth Reader at rreader@ or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@ Want to share a tip securely? Message us on Signal: CarmenP.82, RuthReader.02 or ErinSchumaker.01. AROUND THE AGENCIES The Food and Drug Administration is making big changes to adverse events reporting. The agency plans to merge several adverse events reporting systems into one, according to two current FDA staffers granted anonymity to discuss the moves. The consolidated system would combine adverse-event reporting across vaccines, drugs and devices into one automated platform, according to the two employees. They say agency leadership wants to use artificial intelligence to identify potential or common safety issues with FDA-authorized and approved products in real time. They didn't have knowledge of any implementation details. Why it matters: The centralized system aligns with the Trump administration's larger goal of consolidating agency operations to increase efficiency. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has complained that the agency's centers often duplicate work. Context: The FDA currently uses two distinct systems to track problems with devices, biologics and drugs. One requires patients, doctors and device makers to report adverse events. The other, known as the Sentinel Initiative, allows the agency to query a network of health systems, payers and other health data holders about the safety of a given product. The two staffers couldn't confirm whether Sentinel would be integrated with the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System. The new system's focus appears to overlap with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s agenda to overhaul the way the FDA approves vaccines and monitors their adverse effects. In June,he replaced the panelists on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He has said he intends to remake the compensation process for people who have experienced adverse events by removing the protections that shield vaccine makers from liability.
Forbes
a day ago
- Forbes
Key Takeaways For CIOs From Epic UGM 2025
Epic's latest UGM conference followed the industry trend: another major tech event dominated by AI agent announcements. CIOs are focusing on strategies that improve patient care, streamline operations, and strengthen data security in a digital-first environment. These three themes from the UGM conference not only stand out but also carry significant strategic implications for the future of healthcare IT. Ambient Solution Is a Commodity Ambient documentation has crossed into commodity territory. Epic is embedding an ambient solution through its Microsoft partnership as part of the EMR, cementing that reality, but questions remain. How will pricing shake out? And for organizations already piloting Microsoft Dragon Copilot, will physician-level customizations transfer cleanly, or will workflows need rebuilding? CIOs must factor that transition risk into every decision. Health systems that are investors with early-stage, ambient, standalone vendors won't jump ship quickly. Many will wait for a favorable exit because in venture capital and private equity, an exit is always a possibility. The real issue is timing and whether it aligns with CIOs' operational roadmaps. As ambient becomes standard, point-solution vendors face a make-or-break moment. They must layer on new capabilities, go deeper into the EHR, or pivot to adjacent problems. CIOs need to identify which partners have staying power once the ambient advantage disappears. Cosmos Cosmos is becoming Epic's crown jewel. With de-identified data from more than 300 million patients and 16 billion encounters, Epic sits on a prediction engine at unmatched scale. Its partnership with Yale and Microsoft Research produced CoMET, a model trained on 151 billion events that learns by forecasting the next step in a patient's health journey. Epic stress-tested the CoMET model across 78 real-world tasks, including diagnosis prediction, disease prognosis, and healthcare operations. The model performed just as well as or better than specialized predictive models without requiring much fine-tuning. CoMET will deliver tools like Median Length-of-Stay for Discharge Planning, pushing predictive AI straight into operations. As the dataset grows, the models get stronger, and stronger models deliver sharper insights. CIOs and healthcare operators must act now to embed these predictions into their operational workflow. Universal Patient ID Epic hasn't announced plans for a universal patient ID, but the pieces are in place and the path is clear. Patients juggling multiple MyChart accounts or moving across systems want one login. Epic announced MyChart Central, a feature that will allow patients to connect their records from different providers using a single Epic-issued ID. Through a partnership with CLEAR, patients can now verify their identity securely with biometrics. This integration streamlines account creation and recovery in both MyChart and EpicCare Link, cutting administrative workload while strengthening security across the enterprise. As more standalone solution capabilities fold into Epic's EMR platform, a larger question emerges: Will market consolidation leave enough competition to drive real innovation? Healthcare leaders must balance the appeal of a comprehensive solution with the industry's need for diverse and inventive players.
