UNC Health to join a program with Epic as early adopter of Generative AI

UNC Health will participate as early adopters of Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools through a program with Epic. It will be one of the initial few healthcare systems nationwide to do so.

Epic and Microsoft announced a partnership in April to develop and integrate Large Language Models into Epic’s software.

We are incredibly excited that UNC Health’s work to build strong foundational IT systems and our existing use of AI tools has established us as a national leader helping drive the future of AI in healthcare. For us, the goal is to find ways we can thoughtfully and safely use AI to improve our teammates’ experience and help them focus on patients.” 

Brent Lamm, Sr. VP and Chief Information Officer, UNC Health.

The initial rollout will begin with five to 10 physicians at UNC Health. Our teams will join other early adopters from UC San Diego Health, the University of Wisconsin Health, and Stanford Health Care, with more health systems as part of the next phase of rollouts.

It will begin with a small subset of "more administrative" type messages, similar to how your phone can suggest responses to texts. You can accept the suggestions or write your own. This technology won’t replace the clinician’s judgment. There is always a person reading and sending the message. It simply saves keystrokes.

The program will use generative AI to auto-draft responses to some of the most common and time-intensive patient messages. The integrated AI tools in Epic@UNC could auto-draft a response to a patient’s My UNC Chart message. Then, the physician must review and can edit the message before sending. 

“We often talk about leading the way. This is it,” said Lamm. “We want to be careful with this new technology while still ensuring that we fully explore these opportunities. I'm excited for the organization to be an initial participant in these phased rollouts and for the ideas and use cases that our team of early adopting physicians will develop."