UNC Health to Pilot Epic, Microsoft’s Generative AI Tool

What You Should Know:

• 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.

Building Strong Foundational IT Systems

“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,” said Brent Lamm, UNC Health’s Sr. VP and Chief Information Officer. “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.”

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.

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