Epic Explores AI Agents for Routine Patient Visits

Epic Systems Corporation is exploring AI agents that could handle parts of routine patient visits under physician oversight, Garrett Adams, Epic's senior vice president of research and development, told Becker's Hospital Review. "We have agents that can execute protocols," he said, but Epic has not set a timeline and did not identify any organizations using them in patient care.

In a potential workflow, health systems would set clinical protocols, and agents would gather patient information such as lab results, imaging and cardiology studies and evaluate it against those protocols. A physician would then receive the findings, along with the data reviewed and the protocol followed, and make the decision.

Epic is in a discovery phase with health systems. Adams pointed to medication refills and certain routine urgent care encounters as areas of interest, and said open questions include when an agent should escalate to a clinician and when patients should be able to choose a human clinician instead.