Fair Verona, Wisconsin, was where we laid our scene as more than 500 members of the health tech community gathered for the Open@Epic conference. It was an incredible opportunity to hear what Epic is building next and learn from colleagues across the industry as we continue shaping tools that support both clinicians and patients.
Where Epic Is Heading: Key Announcements From Open@Epic
The day kicked off with a reminder of why interoperability and usability remain central to Epic’s mission, followed by an overview of what’s coming next across the ecosystem. Among the highlights:
- MyChart Central will give patients visibility into their health records across all Epic customer organizations they’ve interacted with—not just one.
- Epic is open-sourcing an AI Trust and Assurance Suite, part of its effort to ensure AI is used safely and effectively in healthcare.
- Continued investment in standards-based interoperability, including expansion to USCDI v5 FHIR API standards.
- Developers will soon be able to query bulk datasets from the Clarity data warehouse, unlocking high-volume research and analytics capabilities.
- A series of new developer playbooks debuted alongside a full revamp of the open.epic.com site.
- Epic is continuing to improve their testing sandbox – I’m personally hopeful that in the future, we’ll see a sandbox full-featured enough for app developers to confidently see what their app will look like inside Epic.
What Health System IT Leaders Want From Tech Partners
Another notable session featured leaders from several health systems discussing what they look for when choosing tech partners. It’s not enough to just provide a set of API calls, go-live, and call it a day. They want partners who are prepared to tackle important issues, including:
- Security: No one wants to have a HIPAA breach on their watch, so we need to make sure we are at the top of our game from a security standpoint.
- Change Management: We can’t catch our health system customers off-guard with major changes to functionality.
- Post Go-Live Support: As health tech partners, we need to prove that we are here for the long run.
- Staying Ahead of API Changes: With technology constantly evolving, tech partners must stay ahead of changes that might break our integrations.
A Closer Look at AI Development Inside Healthcare
One of the most packed sessions of the Open@Epic conference was Developing and Deploying AI in Healthcare. The speakers discussed why AI in healthcare is challenging, and how we can go about developing solutions that will actually scale. A few standout takeaways:
- Understanding the full workflow—including when data becomes available and when users are ready to act on AI-driven insights—is essential for building solutions that scale.
- Teams should adopt tight build-and-test cycles, starting small and iterating quickly.
- It’s impossible to completely remove bias from AI models. Instead, we should be understand that the model is biased and work to mitigate it.
Looking Ahead to the Next Open@Epic
A big thanks to Epic for hosting the attendees on their Verona campus. This year’s Open@Epic conference was packed with meaningful conversations, practical insights, and a clear look at the direction healthcare technology is heading. I’m already looking forward to next year’s Open@Epic conference to see how these ideas continue to evolve.
Sze Hui, CSPO has spent over 8 years in the healthcare industry, leading efforts to optimize workflows and eliminate copy/paste through data interoperability and integrations. As a Solutions Architect, Sze guides health systems through the technical implementation process, bringing data flow and business process together in a cohesive and seamless way.