A Conversation with Borno Akhter on Building Technology That Helps Patients
October 12, 2026
Epic’s Hello World development lead discusses immersion trips, earning patient trust over text and voice, and helping patients get what they need—however they prefer to communicate.
In an interview with ITDigest, Borno Akhter, head of development for Hello World, reflects on his more than 15 years building patient-facing technology. He began on the MyChart team, which now serves more than 195 million users. “You have to get out of the building,” he says, crediting Epic’s immersion trips with keeping developers grounded in how patients and clinicians behave in real care settings.
Akhter outlines the principles behind effective patient outreach: don’t overcommunicate, keep messages short and easy to act on, and respect communication preferences drawn from the patient’s record. He sees the next opportunity in self-service for the interactions that still default to a phone call, like scheduling. Epic is working on letting Emmie answer those calls and handle scheduling and rescheduling. Branded Calling already helps phone-first patients recognize when their health system is calling.
Learn more about Hello World and Branded Calling here.
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