Today in health, it, we talked about epic UGM. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system. And creator of this week health, a set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current. And engaged. We want to thank our show sponsor shore investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance.

Canon medical and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Alright, epic UGM is in the books. I talked to a couple of CEOs who were there. A couple CMIOs who were there. And, , I'm going to be quoting from the cap times article. And the headline is Epic's Judy Faulkner dresses as Amelia Earhart for global conference.

All right. So here's some of the stuff we've heard from this. And I think my take on this is going to be. That epic UGM is not a place you go for innovation. Unless what you're looking for, incremental innovation, right? There's no disruptive innovation that you're going to find there. It really is about, Hey, we're going to make this a little better. We're going to make this a little better. We're going to make this a little better.

Unless you're talking about. You know, essentially eliminating Citrix from your environment, but again, that's incremental innovation. If you're talking about. Getting to a, a patient identified are in cosmos. That's incremental innovation. So anyway, we're going to talk about that a little bit. Not that it's bad. It's just, if you're looking for disruptive innovation, you're not going to find it at UGM. Quite frankly. You may not find it at hymns either,

I'm just making , this, , point based on the information I'm reading from this and the things I've heard. So here we go. Health information. Technology is more complicated than rocket science. Or at least that's what epic systems leaders told employees and customers at the healthcare records company, annual user group meeting on Tuesday.

Each year Epic's partner, hospitals and health insurance companies from around the globe. I gather at its intergalactic headquarters in Verona to discuss the company's past and preview its future. The highlight is always epic. Founder and CEO, Judy Faulkner's keynote address, where she dresses as whimsical characters like Lucille balls.

Character from, I love Lucy. To match this year's theme in a museum Faulkner Don pilot's gear to pay homage to another female. Pioneer Amelia Earhart. As she delivered her hour long address. To a crowd of thousands of 15 centuries, , from 15th centuries of epics, 11,500 seat, deep space auditorium.

Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic. You get the picture Faulkner outlined her vision. For a seamlessly connected healthcare ecosystem using a Mich mix. Of lighthearted, anecdotes and information about new technologies. We'll get an overview of the places of care that have data or need data about the patient. Faulkner told the crowd, we are building a nationwide health, it infrastructure to connect the different parts of healthcare. And that is what epic is doing within the epic ecosystem, which is what they control, which is what they should be doing.

But essentially what they're saying is like we've added wisdom and dentistry. So now you have a bigger picture of what's going on. Inside the body and we're adding different points of care. Again, incremental necessary, incremental innovation. One of the epics. Proposed improvements is an algorithm design to optimize surgery and specialist scheduling. Again, incremental improvement already existed with other companies that actually do this extremely well. But again, and this is one of the things that

Over and over again, they believe they have to build it within the epic ecosystem. , in order to make it available to their clients. Again, not a bad thing. You have some health systems that have invested heavily in epic. They're not going to go out and do a, you know, continue to add third parties into it, but there are some great third parties that do this.

, do this. , K have this capability. In them and have been doing it for years. So again, incremental, according to Epic's implementation executive Tina Perkins operating rooms often sit idle for hours due to changes in doctor's schedules. Epic's new algorithm will find those times and rearrange the schedule to fill those gaps.

With more procedures, reducing patient, wait times. And increasing hospital revenue. Again, good thing to have. , just not new. If organizations can better understand where they're using their resources. Where they could best use their staff time, how they could run more efficiently, how they can lower healthcare costs, epic researcher, Jenessa Sandman said.

Again, all good things. Epic also completed their move to a locally installed software to web based platform. A feed Faulkner claimed. It took 24 million cups of coffee and even more lines of code. Software developer, Caleb macaques said the move will increase access to make upgrades easier. And the biggest thing you're seeing here is we're getting closer to hyperdrive. If not there. I think we're going to have to see a few pilots before we.

We crown somebody at crown this as a success. , and you're also seeing a cloud-based deployment.

Again, this is incremental improvement. But look, this is the thing. When I talk to CEOs. There's the thing they're most excited about the opportunity to reduce a contract from a very complicated technology, being Citrix and replace it with an epic technology. Now they're not gonna be able to get rid of their entire Citrix farm, but they're going to be able to reduce that overall footprint pretty significantly.

It's expensive, it's complicated, and they are going to be able to do hyperdrive. In addition, when you get to a cloud-based environment, it has all the benefits of a cloud based environment. So, you know, they talked about upgrades are going to be easier. As well. , they also went into some big data improvements, cosmos.

Epic's massive database of personal health information. , over three quarters of Americans have clinical, right? They talk about how big the record is as you would imagine. They have. You know, 30, some odd 30 to 40%, some odd market share. , in the us, they hold 149 million patient records. It's big.

And when you have that information and all the visits that are going on there, , it creates a pretty powerful system and pretty powerful database. To rely on. And so you can do some interesting things around research. You can do some interesting things around rare diseases and whatnot. And so that's what they ended up talking about.

I will. So, I mean, that's essentially what I heard from epic UGM. What I heard from CEO's was, , there was nothing earth shattering their most excited about hyperdrive. And there was nothing really earth shattering at the event itself. With that being said, , Judy is amazing and she's amazing from a couple of perspectives.

The one that I respect. The most. Is that she's been able to build this community and it's a very strong community and she brings that community together to learn from each other. That is an incredible value to the, to the healthcare industry. , that she has done that, that she brings them together, that they learned from each

, not only that she has put things together, like honor roll. , like Essentially the awarding different health systems as they make these different, , , milestones within their health system. She has built a phenomenal community around this. No, no. Getting around it. So that's. That is one of the biggest legacies that she will deliver to healthcare.

The other thing I will say about epic is that they continue to do the incremental innovation. And that's good. It's good for the industry. It may not, you know, some people, if you are developing. , ad-ons to the EHR or filling different gaps. , what epic has signaled over the years is, , just watch out at some point, they're going to be coming for whatever.

, service you're offering whatever revenue you're offering. , Epic's not a good partner. Per I mean, they could be a good partner for a time, but at any given moment they could change, turn and come and go after your revenue and go after your. , go after your services. So they are a tricky partner to partner with, to say the least.

But at the end of the day, one of the reasons they're doing that is because the health systems that use epic are coming back to them saying, look, we want Vendor consolidation. We want to do application consolidation. We have this investment in epic. Is there a way you can deliver these services? Either they can't afford to continue to bring in these. They can't afford to add the complexity of these additional add-ons.

And they are actually wanting epic to do that. And so epic , And then, you know, my final takeaway from this is incremental innovation. I don't expect. A massive change in how the EHR functions to change the way we deliver healthcare. Yes, they will add in, , AI and machine learning. Yes, they will add in listening capabilities, either ambient listening or other kinds of dictation type services, they will continue to do those kinds of things. All of them will be incremental.

I don't think we're going to see epic. Do a massive change, nor quite frankly, have they ever been that company? If you think about it, one of the reasons, one of the primary reasons, epic. Is in the place they're in is they had an integrated Mecca medical record. They had an acute and ambulatory system at a time when the industry did not have that. And they won a lot of the RFPs just based on that fact alone.

Now they've earned that mantle, but that was one of the biggest drivers to them getting to where they are an integrated medical record between the ambulatory. And acute. So they've never really been a massively in an innovative company. Yes. It might be hard to put an EHR together and to integrate all those parts and to listen and to continue to innovate.

, even incrementally on top of that, but at the end of the day, there's nothing disruptive about the EHR at this And. I wouldn't expect there to be any time in the future. So that's a, that's what went on at epic UGM, again, kudos to, , Judy and the team for putting such a great community together and bringing people together to learn from each other. I think that is again, when it get it going to be one of their biggest legacies to the industry.

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