Happy Patients, Happy Clinicians, Better Care: The Epic community continues to advance healthcare AI

On April 10, the National Academy of Medicine’s Digital Health Action Collaborative released a paper exploring the current and future impact of Generative AI on healthcare. Key findings from the publication—as well as a companion article in the New England Journal of Medicine—include:

• Reduced clinical documentation time and workload: AI-assisted note generation has cut documentation time by 20% and lowered after-hours work by 30%. Advancements like these allow clinicians to spend more time with their patients while fostering more sustainable workloads.
• Better communication: 72% of clinicians using AI-powered patient messages have reported a reduction in cognitive load—helping them respond more quickly and thoughtfully to their patients’ messages.
• Improved patient experience: Clearer, more accessible summaries written by AI can help patients better understand their diagnoses and treatment options.

The paper explores how GenAI will advance patient care by enabling precision medicine, rare disease research, and genomic analysis through large, diverse datasets—supporting personalized treatments, improved diagnostics, and new genomic insights. The Collaborative’s findings suggest that as GenAI continues to evolve, it will improve patient experiences, support clinicians in their work, boost operational efficiency, and drive meaningful advancements in medicine.

The Digital Health Collaborative includes several members of the Epic community—Emory University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and Washington University School of Medicine—as well as Epic and Johnson & Johnson.