07-08-2025
Epic takes notes
BUSINESS PLAN
Epic, the company that manages electronic health records for nearly half of U.S. hospitals, is expected to announce new technology this month that automatically transcribes doctors' notes during patient visits, according to two doctors, a health industry group representative and a venture capitalist with knowledge of the announcement, granted anonymity to discuss the news.
The move could reshape a market that's so far been dominated by relative outsiders, such as the startup Abridge and Microsoft-owned Nuance.
Note-taking artificial intelligence tools, known as ambient scribes, are becoming increasingly popular in health care. Over 70 percent of practice leaders report some use of AI for patient visits, according to an August poll run by the Medical Group Management Association, which represents health care administrators.
Late to the game: Epic is not the first of its peers to launch its own AI scribe. The company has previously partnered with Microsoft and Abridge, integrating their ambient scribes within their platform. But other electronic health records have already moved in this direction. Athenahealth offers its own version of ambient notes, as do Oracle and Elation, an EHR that supports smaller clinician offices.
In 2024, Epic had 42.3 percent of the U.S. hospital market, according to health IT market analyst KLAS Research. At roughly 46 years old, the company continues to gain market share. One of Epic's advantages is that it offers many free tools.
A time-saver: Ambient scribes can significantly reduce the time doctors spend on paperwork, giving them more face time with their patients. For example, Kaiser Permanente Group's clinicians saved more than 15,700 hours in one year when they used an ambient scribe — the equivalent of 1,794 working days — compared with nonusers, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in March.
But the tools can be expensive, ranging in price from $100 to $400 per doctor per month.
Brendan Keeler, head of health interoperability at tech consultancy HTD Health, predicted that 20 percent of Epic's EHR users will start using the company's new AI scribe soon after launch..
'It'll underperform to start, and they'll slowly improve it and erode existing players' market share,' said Keeler.
Ambient scribe players have been bolstering their cash reserves. Earlier this year, Abridge raised $300 million while competitors Suki AI and Nabla each raised $70 million. Last week, Ambience, another prominent ambient scribe, announced it raised $243 million.
Still, Julie Yoo, a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz who invested in Ambience, said these companies may still have an advantage.
'One competitive edge that the best-of-breed ambient scribe companies might have is that individual physicians have been granted a lot of agency in the upfront product evaluation processes,' she told Ruth. 'Which means product quality, accuracy, and user experience actually really matters in terms of what ultimately gets selected.'
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EXAM ROOM
Health care executives are raising concerns about the lack of privacy safeguards around consumer health tools as the Trump administration seeks to increase the use of AI and digital health apps in patient care.
Patient health data has been protected for decades by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), a law that requires doctors, health insurance, and health clinics and their vendors to secure patient health data.
'HIPAA does not protect my data coming off of my ring or my watch or other wearables,' Deborah DiSanzo Eldracher, president of Best Buy Health, which works with hospitals to set up remote health monitoring in patients' homes, said this week at a panel discussion on AI in health care at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 'We're just really in need of some federal health care data privacy regulation, because we don't have it.'
As POLITICO reported last week, the Trump administration has buy-in from many in the health and tech industries to free up data so patients could input their medical records into apps and artificial intelligence programs that can help inform choices they make about their diet, fitness and health.
It's unclear how well those apps protect patient data. Congress has not passed a general privacy law that would include consumer health information generated on wearables or stored in apps. As a result, 20 states have approved their own privacy laws.
Dusadee Sarangarm, chief medical information officer, University of New Mexico Health, who also spoke at the Harvard event, said that having to comply with myriad state laws presents a challenge for app developers.
'If every single airport you went through had a different set of security measures, had different criteria, had different set ups, it would be chaos,' said Sarangarm. 'That's what our vendors have to go through. That keeps innovation down.'
