Health systems are positioning themselves for the future by implementing next-generation EHR solutions.
IT leaders told Becker’s they’re leaning into ambient listening, agentic AI and clinical decision support to create forward-looking EHRs.
At Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Novant Health, the most innovative EHR project has been predictive analytics integrated directly into the platform, said Onyeka Nchege, executive vice president and chief digital and information officer.
“By leveraging anonymized patient data, we can forecast disease risk, recommend proactive interventions, and deliver more personalized treatment plans,” he said. “This data-driven approach has the potential to improve outcomes and ultimately strengthen the overall health of our communities.”
Louisville, Ky.-based Baptist Health has also been embedding new capabilities into its Epic EHR, such as streamlined MyChart patient history responses, AI for coding and a state-based prescription monitoring program, said Brett Oliver, MD, chief medical information officer.
“These efforts collectively support a more seamless, responsive care experience while preparing our system for future demands,” he said.
Austin-based University of Texas System has instituted ambient AI scribes, virtual nursing and increased enterprise data warehouse interoperability into its EHR, said Zain Kazmi, chief digital and analytics officer.
“Across many University of Texas health campuses, the AI ambient scribe has been a revolutionary addition to the electronic medical record systems, improving clinician efficiency and engagement with patients, along with enhancements in back-office quality and efficiency,” he said.
Milwaukee-based Froedtert Health has developed a “digital chassis” platform that includes patient education and decision-making tools, chat-based coordination, immediate video escalation capabilities, and cohesive coordination with in-person care and resources, said Bradley Crotty, MD, vice president and chief digital engagement officer.
“What makes this particularly powerful is that everything connects directly to our electronic health record system and existing mobile app and digital services, creating a truly seamless experience for patients,” he said. “Information flows naturally throughout the system, allowing us to introduce new capabilities that enhance how we serve our patients’ needs.”
An innovative EHR solution at Orlando (Fla.) Health is the Infusion Template Generator, which allows the 25-hospital system to more effectively schedule infusion appointments by analyzing past patterns, said Novlet Mattis, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer.
“Every night, the system reviews schedules, adjusts open time slots based on the demand and shifts appointments between chairs — without changing appointment times — so we can serve more patients with less waiting,” she said. “The impact has been profound.”
That has included a 20% increase in available chair time, 6% rise in overall appointments, 32% drop in patient wait times, 50% improvement in nurse satisfaction, 75% reduction in staff time spent manually adjusting schedules, and 5.5% boost in clinic revenue, Ms. Mattis said.
“Our largest current investment in time and energy is completely overhauling the EMR platform, infusing AI from the foundational data structure to produce a user-centric, individual experience for our physician and nursing staff,” said Thomas Selva, MD, chief medical information officer of Columbia-based University of Missouri Health Care. “The ultimate goal is to shift from ‘an EMR’ to a platform of care — available to all members of the care team, including and most importantly our patients.”
Morgantown, W.Va.-based WVU Medicine’s most innovative EHR initiative has been its homegrown Total Patient Journey, which is building unified patient narratives using structured and unstructured data, said Jim Venturella, senior vice president and CIO. The tool leverages generative AI, natural language processing, retrieval-augmented generation and the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership data standard.
“We’re enabling real-time provider insights, powering population health, and laying a foundation for the future of healthcare delivery,” Mr. Venturella said. “Clinicians will be able to ask natural language questions about their patients and get accurate referenced answers in seconds.”
Clearwater, Fla.-based BayCare Health System is diligently incorporating the latest AI features into its Oracle Health EHR, including ambient listening, said CIO Lynnette Clinton.
“We are ensuring plans are in place to evaluate and, if appropriate for us, adopt each new AI-first function that Oracle Health creates,” she said. “We’ve not seen solutions as effective as these in many years of EHR use. We are ready for easy chart search and the serving up of visit-related information.”
Ms. Clinton likes to borrow a quote from Tim Liesching, MD, chief medical officer of BayCare Medical Group: “We are working to bring back the joy of practice.”
“My team and I can do our part by ensuring the EHR is performing at its best for our physicians, nurses, and ultimately our patients,” she said.
“Without a doubt, it’s ambient documentation,” said Joel Klein, MD, senior vice president and CIO of Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical System. “Very few single things have burst onto the scene that dial up physician interest like this. It’s clear it has a small but reproducible impact on actual productivity and objectively lowers provider aggravation.”
He said the industry still needs to determine how to quickly bring the technology into the inpatient space and into the hands of nurses, therapists and other clinicians.
“There’s a ton of training we still have to figure out to get skeptics and those unfamiliar with scribing culture on board, but this is how we’ll all document soon,” he said.
Now that ambient AI has matured for outpatient providers, the technology’s shift to the inpatient side will be a “game-changer for nurses,” said Robert Adamson, PharmD, executive vice president and CIO of West Orange, N.J.-based RWJBarnabas Health.
“We have anywhere between 9,000 to 10,000 nurses,” he said. “If all of our nurses actually didn’t have to document, and they could just have a conversation with their patient, look at the patient, talk with the patient, as opposed to documenting on a computer, it would be so much better.”
The 14-hospital system has been working with two vendors in the space, Abridge and Microsoft’s Nuance, to develop content for the solution, Mr. Adamson said.
“The innovative thing that we are investing in globally is that we are creating a decision support capability that we’re able to take our data and create insights and infuse them back into the electronic health record workflow,” said Neal Patel, MD, CIO of Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “We’re calling this concept ‘system intelligence,’ so that instead of having to go external to our electronic health record to be prompted to do something, we’re able to take the data, leverage different AI tools to create a finding and then actually infuse that back into the workflow where clinicians expect it.”
For example, the system might be used to alert clinicians that a diabetic patient who presented to the hospital for a condition other than diabetes uses an insulin pump, ensuring the treatment plan doesn’t counteract it, he said.
Tacoma, Wash.-based MultiCare Health System has employed agentic AI to create a tool, TeD, that allows employees to ask questions about what the latest Epic upgrade means to their specific role, said Bradd Busick, senior vice president and CIO.
“We were also the first healthcare system in the country to automate prior authorization between a payer and a provider in Epic, leveraging FHIR to facilitate the exchange of information,” he said. “We know this is one of the most burdensome tasks in healthcare and through automation, we can save our providers time, allowing them to work on higher value tasks while accelerating care by removing the barrier of a payer to authorize service.”
At Evanston, Ill.-based Endeavor Health, the most forward-looking EHR project is PaSSPort, the nine-hospital system’s consolidation of three instances of Epic into one, said CIO Deb Anderson.
“In today’s environment, health systems must operate more like intelligent platforms than separate institutions,” she said. “By aligning clinical data, workflows and governance across the recently merged system, PaSSPort supports real-time decision-making, scalable automation, and integration with emerging technologies at scale.”
She added that the move “positions us to adapt faster, operate smarter, and lead confidently into the future of care.”
AI is set to “fundamentally transform clinical decision-making and the delivery of care,” said Sha Edathumparampil, chief digital and information officer of Coral Gables-based Baptist Health South Florida.
“AI tools will enable providers to rapidly analyze extensive datasets — including medical records, genomic data, population health data and research literature — directly at the point of care, facilitating quicker diagnoses and identifying optimal treatment pathways,” he said.
The EHR-integrated technology synthesizes data such as genomics, medical history, laboratory results, imaging data and real-time vital signs, allowing for more personalized treatment recommendations and earlier risk identification, Mr. Edathumparampil said.
“Seamlessly embedding this technology into clinical workflows will also ensure that the physician experience with EHR technology also improves significantly,” he said.
At Bronx, N.Y.-based Montefiore Health System, “What are we looking from a future perspective and feeling very excited about is a combination-of-workflow tool, which a player like Epic themselves is developing, where agentic technology can complete a lot of nursing workflows, reduce lot of in-basket messages that are coming to the patients or from the patients, and complete several types of documentation and summarization that often take more than 50% of the time from our from our clinicians,” said Deepesh Chandra, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer.
Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health is innovating by switching to an Epic EHR and Apple devices across the 27-hospital system, said Jennifer Stemmler, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer. The organization plans to launch Epic in September 2026, having its new Apple devices up and running by that time.
“Because we’re going live with Epic, we are doubling down on foundation-level workflows, which will enable us to very easily turn on gen AI features without a lot of rework and database restructuring that some health systems may not be able to take advantage of very quickly,” Ms. Stemmler said.
