Epic lets its AI assistants reach into other companies' apps
Physician in the Loop, Oct 22, 2026
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Epic Systems on Oct. 21 introduced Connectors, which link outside developers' apps to its electronic health record so Epic's AI assistants can pull information from those apps and complete tasks in them.
Health care organizations can find developer-built Connectors in Epic's Showroom marketplace starting in March 2027 and can review what each one reads and changes before switching it on, the company said. Epic plans to begin testing with some health system partners by the end of 2026 and will charge developers to distribute Connectors, Fierce Healthcare reported. The announcement came at Epic's Open@Epic developer conference, where an Epic executive also said consumer chatbots that pull patient records are adding traffic and cost for health systems.
Elsewhere, the American Hospital Association asked the Food and Drug Administration to make AI developers primarily responsible for monitoring generative AI devices, and five large employers backed extending electronic prior authorization to self-funded health plans, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said.
THE DETAILS
- WatchDeployment Oct 21, 2026
Developer-built Connectors will be listed on Epic Showroom starting in March 2027, Epic said.
Connectors let Emmie, Epic's AI for patients, Art, its AI for clinicians, Penny, its AI for revenue-cycle and operations staff, and custom agents built in Agent Factory retrieve information from other apps and complete tasks in them, Epic said. Its examples include bringing an ambulance's estimated arrival time to the emergency department and having Emmie place a hospitalized patient's meal order in the hospital's dietary app. Availity, Gozio Health and VPL are among the first developers, citing coverage, prior authorization and claims work, wayfinding and medication delivery tracking. Epic will initially use the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI tools to other software, Fierce Healthcare reported, and Johnston Thayer, Epic's vice president of health informatics, told the outlet that "there will not be new autonomous actions taken as a result of these capabilities." - FYIDeployment Oct 21, 2026Connections from consumer chatbots and individual access services are adding load to health system IT, Seth Howard, Epic's executive vice president of research and development, said at Open@Epic on Oct. 21, according to Becker's Hospital Review. Advocate Health, where patients linking MyChart accounts to ChatGPT rose more than 7,000% from July to August, pays part of the cost of the resulting data requests and can absorb it for now, said Dr. Bobbie Byrne, its chief information officer. Under Epic's model, health systems run the software and carry the infrastructure costs. Epic is supporting FHIR notifications, a standard that lets outside apps respond to an event such as a visit instead of repeatedly checking for new data, and Byrne said she understands Epic is working with OpenAI to make the requests more efficient.Source: Becker's Hospital Review
- FYIRegulation Oct 19, 2026In Oct. 19 comments on the FDA's discussion paper on regulating generative AI-enabled medical devices, the American Hospital Association said vendors and developers "must be responsible for the ongoing performance, maintenance and integrity of the tools they market," with performance metrics, thresholds that trigger review and requirements to share performance data with providers. It asked the FDA to judge risk by reversibility, safeguards, traceability of outputs and likelihood of error as well as by a device's autonomy, and to work with the Federal Trade Commission on labeling that separates informational tools from tools that take action and states how much clinicians are in the decision loop. The association asked that clinical decision support and administrative AI stay outside FDA oversight. It said rural, critical access and safety-net hospitals may lack the staff and infrastructure for ongoing monitoring, and cited its survey finding that 74% of hospitals have multiple teams evaluating predictive AI, Becker's Hospital Review reported.
- WatchRegulation Oct 21, 2026
Certain payers under CMS's interoperability and prior authorization rule must implement electronic prior authorization by Jan. 1, 2027, CMS said.
The five employers signed a statement of support to bring the electronic prior authorization and other changes from the 2025 Prior Authorization Pledge to employers that sponsor self-funded health plans, CMS and the Labor Department said Oct. 21. More than 180 million people, over 53% of Americans, get coverage through self-funded employer plans, according to Census data cited in the release, and those employers often rely on third-party administrators to handle prior authorization. Patients and doctors "shouldn't have to fall back on faxes and paperwork" because of how a plan is funded, said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the CMS administrator.Source: CMS - FYIDeployment Oct 21, 2026Registry staff required at least 95% accuracy before the tool could abstract charts without human review, and it reached a little over 80%, Michael Hasselberg, the health system's chief transformation and digital officer, told Becker's Hospital Review. A fallback that summarized chart data for registry nurses saved little time because the nurses re-checked the source records, he said, and the system's AI steering committee of senior executives voted to stop the project after about two months. Manual abstraction takes about 2.5 hours for each of roughly 6,000 new cases a year, with a goal of about 30 minutes, according to Hasselberg, who said the project is shelved rather than scrapped.Source: Becker's Hospital Review
- FYIRegulation Oct 21, 2026The 510(k) clearance, K262015, carries a summary dated Sept. 29, and Elucid announced it Oct. 21. The software estimates fractional flow reserve, a measure of whether a narrowing limits blood flow, from coronary CT angiography and folds plaque composition and anatomy into the estimate, the company said. In the multicenter ELUCIDATE FFR-CT study it reported 92.2% sensitivity and 93.1% specificity against invasive pressure-wire measurement; HIT Consultant reported the study covered 491 vessels in 347 patients. The figures are the company's, and Elucid said the results will be presented at the TCT cardiology meeting in San Diego on Nov. 1.
- FYIDeployment Oct 20, 2026Doximity said Oct. 20 that, in the coming weeks, clinicians at health systems that use both products will see an answer drawn from Wolters Kluwer's UpToDate beside Ask's own response without leaving the tool. UpToDate covers 13,000 topics written and reviewed by 7,600 clinicians, editors and peer reviewers, and Ask is deployed at more than 165 health systems, according to Doximity. "Trust is the number one issue with AI answers," Jeff Tangney, Doximity's chief executive, told Fierce Healthcare. The announcement followed Doximity's settlement with OpenEvidence, covered Oct. 20.Sources: Fierce Healthcare, MobiHealthNews
- FYIRegulation Oct 20, 2026The Seoul-based company said Oct. 20 that the Class II software uses brain MRI, demographic information and cognitive test results to provide supplementary information for clinicians evaluating patients with mild cognitive impairment for progression to Alzheimer's dementia within five years. The announcement reports no clinical validation data such as accuracy, sensitivity or study design. NeuroXT said it is also seeking approval in South Korea.Source: NeuroXT (PR Newswire)