Epic’s 2025 UGM made one theme unmistakably clear: the future of clinical and operational workflows will be powered by AI. Across multiple keynote sessions, Epic positioned itself not just as an electronic health record vendor, but as an intelligence layer for the entire healthcare enterprise.

Below is a distilled overview of the biggest announcements and what they mean for health systems heading into 2026.

1. The Expansion of Epic’s AI Agents: Art, Emmie, and Penny

Epic formally introduced or previewed three generative-AI–driven assistants:

Art: the clinical copilot

Art is aimed at helping clinicians synthesize patient information, draft documentation, and navigate notes efficiently. The ambition is to reduce cognitive load while improving accuracy.

Emmie: the patient-facing assistant

Emmie is designed to guide patients through scheduling, preparation, follow-up, and preventive health tasks. This brings a more consumer-grade, multi-step patient experience directly into MyChart.

Penny: the revenue cycle agent

Penny focuses on coding, claims follow-up, and denial management — effectively automating some of the most resource-intensive RCM tasks.

Why it matters for health systems

Health systems should expect over the next 12–24 months:

• A shift toward partially automated clinical documentation
• New patient engagement channels that reduce friction and call volume
• More efficient revenue cycle departments with fewer manual interventions
• A need to rethink staffing models as AI takes on increasingly complex tasks

These agents will also introduce new governance responsibilities (e.g., transparency, auditing, quality checks).

2. Cosmos Grows — and Predictive Models Mature

Epic highlighted major growth in Cosmos, its federated clinical dataset:

• Hundreds of millions of patient records now included
• Billions of clinical events contributing to new predictive-model development
• Introduction of models like CoMET (Cosmos Medical Event Transformer)
• Announced “Cosmos AI Lab” access coming in 2026

Implications for health systems

This marks the beginning of a new era: health systems will increasingly rely on models trained on population-scale datasets rather than building their own in isolation.

Health systems should begin preparing by:

• Improving data cleanliness in their EHR
• Aligning documentation practices for AI readiness
• Strengthening internal data science teams to interpret and evaluate these models
• Ensuring executives understand the capabilities and limitations of foundation models

The organizations that treat AI as an enterprise capability rather than a niche IT project will be best positioned.

3. Identity & Access Upgrades: MyChart Central

Epic’s new MyChart Central experience aims to unify patient access across multiple health systems with a single login. Combined with Emmie, it signals a future where MyChart becomes a more cohesive digital front door.

Why it matters

• Reduced friction for patients navigating multi-system care
• More consistent patient engagement and portal usage
• Potential downstream improvements in adherence to preventive care tasks
• Health systems may see fewer forgotten credentials and support tickets

For CIOs and CMIOs, patient identity management will become even more strategic.

4. A Push Into Operational Efficiency

UGM also featured a strong focus on:

• Cost-reduction dashboards
• Benchmarking across organizations
• AI-assisted performance analysis for executives
• Revenue cycle automation via Penny

Meaning for health systems

Epic is explicitly signaling that operational performance — not just clinical documentation — is a core part of the platform’s future.

This has implications for:

• Finance teams
• Shared services
• Workforce planning
• Digital transformation strategy

Health systems will need to rethink how they evaluate ROI, justify technology budgets, and allocate human resources.

5. Preparing Your Workforce: The Quiet Theme

While the announcements focused heavily on technology, the underlying message was about workforce transformation. As AI permeates clinical, operational, and patient-facing workflows, health systems must invest in:

• Change management
• Training and re-education
• AI governance committees
• Updated job descriptions across clinical and admin roles
• Clear communication frameworks around how AI assists — not replaces — humans

The systems that thrive will be those that prepare their people, not just their technology stack.

What This All Means: A Strategic Outlook for Health Systems

Epic is entering a phase where:

• EHR functionality becomes ambient
• Predictive modeling becomes standard
• Patient portals evolve into intelligent assistants
• Revenue cycle processes become partly autonomous
• Workforce models shift toward oversight rather than manual execution

For health systems, the takeaway is clear:
AI maturity will become a competitive differentiator.
Organizations that modernize their data, workflows, governance, and talent will be positioned to benefit the most from these tools as they roll out through 2025–2026.