• Healthcare

UNC Health’s AI Responses through Epic InBasket Pilot

August 08, 2023

UNC Health was the first to pilot Epic’s AI tool, a ground-breaking design to produce drafts of medical professionals’ responses to patients’ queries and comments. This exciting pilot project has been in operation for a few weeks, with key personnel from UNC Health visiting Epic’s main office to brainstorm upcoming AI developments within their Electronic Health Records (EHRs).

Epic’s AI tool takes up the task of preparing drafts of in-basket messages, which clinicians can scrutinize, modify, and then forward to the patient who inquired. Its purpose is to reduce the amount of time doctors currently devote to answering patient messages on the computer, specifically within the UNC MyChart portal.

The initial phase of this project has been a testing ground, with ten clinicians actively using the tool within a controlled environment. As the project evolves, UNC Health plans to onboard more physicians to the pilot when it officially launches in Epic on the 6th of August.

The health system, situated in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has discovered two fundamental learnings from the pilot’s start. First and foremost, it emphasized clinicians’ need to remain engaged with their messages as the human. Furthermore, it focused on the clinicians to understand that the job of AI is to help, not override, their obligations.

David McSwain, MD, the Chief Medical Informatics Officer at UNC Health, emphasized that “Most importantly, it’s that a clinician needs to always remain in the loop when corresponding with patients. It’s important for our clinicians to understand, and for our patients to understand, that this is not AI taking over medical decision-making. This is AI making the medical decision-making easier for our clinicians and more streamlined.”

UNC Health has maintained a strong partnership with Epic, having regular weekly reviews to share feedback directly about the application design, enhancing the clinician’s experience and patient outcomes.

Dr. McSwain states, “The feedback from our clinicians who are piloting this effort is that the message drafts are generally helpful, especially for some of the more routine responses like work excuses and medication refills, but they can’t be a substitute for our clinicians. We are working specifically with Epic on how to ensure that our clinicians engage with the message and how to draw their attention to the parts of the draft where the AI isn’t best equipped to answer.”

When deployed correctly, UNC Health believes the AI tool can affirm the clinicians’ expertise by highlighting that it is a supportive tool, not a replacement for them.

After their recent visit to Epic, Dr. McSwain expressed appreciation: “Having just gotten back from our trip to Epic, we are really excited for the work that is ongoing, and working alongside them.”

In the following stages, more clinicians will be gradually added every couple of weeks, increasing the pilot team to include many physicians and nursing personnel who will respond to patient communications. The health system will extensively examine the technology’s influence on physician productivity and burnout across different specialties as the trial progresses.

“One of the things that we’re excited about with this project is that we’re engaging not only clinicians who have informatics and technological expertise, but we’re also engaging clinicians who are directly involved with our wellness initiatives at UNC, as well as clinicians across multiple specialties,” is one component of this project that interests Dr. McSwain.

It is anticipated that the AI tool will learn from physician feedback and modify its replies. Healthcare professionals learn to alter the prompts that guide the creation of message drafts until the AI reaches the stage of autonomous learning.

Dr. McSwain said that “there are so many opportunities to improve the efficiency of our healthcare processes and to support our teams using this technology.”

 

Sources:
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/how-unc-healths-epic-chatbot-pilot-will-inform-the-way-ai-is-used-in-ehrs.html
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/unc-health-cio-says-epic-ai-pilot-will-be-a-game-changer-for-reducing-pajama-time.html