By Fanta Cherif, research consultant, life sciences, pharmacy, and diagnostic research

Takeaway: Epic is moving from workflow support to workflow orchestration

For years, Epic's innovation strategy focused on digitizing clinical and administrative work. More recently, the focus has shifted to making those workflows easier through automation and ambient technologies. This year, the message felt different.

Across demonstrations and product discussions, Epic increasingly positioned itself as the platform coordinating work across clinicians, patients, administrators, researchers, and operational teams. The most interesting theme was not any single AI announcement, but Epic's emphasis on how Art, Emmie, Cosmos, Agent Factory, and operational tools work together.

Epic appears to be positioning itself around orchestration: connecting patient data, real-world evidence, operational workflows, and AI agents into a coordinated system rather than offering disconnected AI features. AI is no longer being presented as a standalone feature. Instead, it is becoming embedded throughout the ecosystem, influencing how information is gathered, interpreted, and acted upon across the continuum of care.

The implication for health systems is significant. The value of AI will not come from individual tools alone, but from how well those tools work together within existing workflows.

Takeaway: The competition is no longer just about the EHR

Historically, Epic's success has been tied to the strength of its EHR. Increasingly, however, Epic is competing in spaces that extend far beyond traditional clinical documentation and care delivery.

Whether through operational capabilities, research platforms, patient engagement tools, revenue cycle innovation, or enterprise-wide AI functionality, Epic continues to expand its footprint across the healthcare technology landscape. The underlying strategy appears straightforward: reduce the need for organizations to rely on multiple disconnected vendors.

For healthcare leaders, this creates both opportunity and complexity. A more integrated technology ecosystem may simplify governance and data sharing, but it also raises important questions about vendor dependency, flexibility, and long-term innovation.

Question: If Epic can do everything, what happens to the rest of the ecosystem?

One of the clearest messages from UGM was Epic's continued expansion beyond the traditional EHR. From AI assistants and research tools to ERP, clinical trials, and operational capabilities, Epic is steadily absorbing functionality that historically lived with third-party vendors.

For health systems, the appeal is obvious: fewer interfaces, tighter integration, and a more unified experience. But as Epic expands, organizations may face a new tradeoff. How much standardization is too much? And what happens to innovation when a growing share of healthcare technology is concentrated within a single platform?

Question: Is AI creating a competitive advantage, or simply raising the cost of entry?

Nearly every major Epic announcement had AI at its core. The challenge is that AI capabilities are quickly becoming table stakes across healthcare technology.

Today, ambient documentation, patient assistants, coding support, and workflow automation generate excitement. Tomorrow, they may simply be expected functionality. If every vendor delivers similar AI experiences, health systems will have to answer a harder question: what actually creates differentiation?

The winners may not be the organizations with the most AI tools, but those that are best positioned to operationalize them at scale.

By Ben Isenhour, senior director, provider technology services, Optum Advisory

During UGM, Epic showed that it is rapidly expanding its AI capabilities across both clinical and operational workflows. This acceleration is being fueled by a combination of autonomous software development techniques that shorten product release cycles and a significant investment of Epic's R&D resources into agentic AI.

One of the clearest examples is Agent Factory, where Epic has partnered with a select group of health systems to develop and deploy AI-powered workflow automations. As these solutions mature, Epic's strategy is to make proven automations broadly available across its client community, creating a growing library of shared innovation and strengthening the value of the Epic ecosystem.

While technology capabilities continue to advance, the hard work of identifying the right use cases, redesigning workflows, driving adoption, and measuring realized value remains. Those challenges are not solved by technology alone. This is where Optum is doubling down, helping clients translate emerging AI capabilities into measurable operational and clinical outcomes.

By Katie Dunnivant, director, provider technology services, Optum Advisory

Leaving UGM this year, the biggest challenge wasn't identifying the major themes. It was determining where to focus first. The volume of innovation across the Epic ecosystem is accelerating so quickly that organizations are increasingly challenged — not by a lack of capability, but by prioritization, adoption, and execution.

1. AI is moving from exploration to operationalization

This year felt like a turning point for AI. The conversation has shifted from "What can AI do?" to "How do we deploy it safely, effectively, and at scale?" Organizations are moving beyond pilots and proofs of concept and are increasingly focused on governance, workflow integration, workforce adoption, and measurable outcomes. The most successful organizations will be those that can operationalize AI while maintaining trust, compliance, and clinical integrity.

2. Access to Epic continues to expand

Epic continues to lower barriers for organizations that historically may not have had the scale or resources to adopt the platform. The expansion of models such as Orchard, Garden Plot, and Flower Pot reflects a broader strategy to bring Epic capabilities to smaller organizations, rural providers, and new market segments.

3. Technology alone is no longer the constraint

As Epic expands support models and introduces tools designed to accelerate build and maintenance activities, the conversation is increasingly about organizational readiness, governance, and change management rather than technology implementation alone. The challenge isn't getting access to capabilities. It's leveraging them effectively.

4. Optimization is replacing implementation as the primary discussion

For many organizations, the opportunity is no longer getting onto Epic. It's maximizing the value of what they already own. Health systems are looking for ways to improve workforce efficiency, revenue cycle performance, patient experience, and operational effectiveness using capabilities that already exist within the platform.

5. The pace of change is accelerating

My biggest takeaway is that "keeping up" is becoming a strategic challenge in itself. Between AI, cybersecurity, revenue cycle, analytics, workforce management, and continuous platform enhancements, organizations need a more deliberate approach to prioritization and value realization. The winners won't necessarily be those with the most technology, but those with the strongest governance and ability to turn innovation into measurable outcomes.

What this means for health systems

The conversation is no longer about whether innovation is available. It is. The real challenge is determining which initiatives will drive meaningful value, how to sequence investments, and how to ensure new capabilities are adopted and sustained. As the pace of change accelerates, execution, governance, and strategic prioritization may become the greatest differentiators between organizations that lead and those that struggle to keep up. 

*Advisory Board is a subsidiary of Optum. All Advisory Board research, expert perspectives, and recommendations remain independent.