Epic AI Charting

The model is the engine of this module, and the platform around it carries its own value. AI Charting listens to the visit, drafts the note and queues orders, and none of that exists without the speech and language models behind it, so the capability being licensed is AI from end to end.

It is still a module of Epic's record system rather than a product sold on its own. It runs only inside Epic, it is switched on by organizations already licensing that system, and the record it writes into is the thing they bought first.

That places it at B: the capability does not exist without the model, and the platform carries other value.

The oversight structure is described in outline, and the part after an error is missing. AI Charting drafts the note and queues up orders based on the conversation; Epic's own words describe drafting and suggesting, so the clinician reviews the note and decides whether each order is placed. Because the feature sits in the chart, the draft is built with the patient's medications, problems and history in view.

What Epic does not publish is the boundary. Nothing says which order types can be queued, whether any are excluded, how queued orders are presented for approval, what the system does when it is unsure, or how errors found after signing are handled.

Ask which orders AI Charting can queue, whether each must be accepted individually, and what happens to a queued order the clinician does not review.

The supplier is named, without versions or an update practice. Microsoft said in August 2025 that it supplies its Dragon ambient AI technology to Epic's charting capability, and Epic told Digital Health News that Microsoft provides transcription, speaker separation and important note components while Epic does the listening inside its own Haiku and Canto apps. In February 2026 Epic said the feature uses multiple AI models accessed through Azure.

Which models draft the note, which version is in service, and how changes are announced are not published; Epic describes AI Charting and Microsoft Dragon Copilot as separate products without saying what differs underneath.

Ask which models produce the transcript and the note today, and how customers are told when they change.

The model provider is named and the terms that govern data once it arrives are not published. Microsoft stated in August 2025 that it brings its Dragon ambient AI technology to Epic's charting capability, Epic said Microsoft supplies transcription, speaker separation and note components, and Epic described the models as accessed through Azure. A buyer can identify the party that receives the visit audio.

What is not public: a subprocessor list for the feature, which Microsoft services process the audio and in which region, whether audio and transcripts are retained or logged, and whether they are excluded from training. Epic's Data Privacy Framework policy says data passes to third parties only for uses customers authorize, but does not address this path.

Ask Epic for the data handling terms that apply to the Microsoft processing in writing.

Named customers and scale of use are published, and no outcome figures for the feature are. Epic's release says clinicians report staying focused on the patient and capturing a more complete record of the visit, with less work after the patient leaves, and it quotes a provider at Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin. At its August 2026 meeting Epic reported the feature live in more than 70 specialties and the nursing version live at 11 health systems.

Those are deployment counts and testimonials. Epic publishes no documentation time, note quality or accuracy result for AI Charting, and cites no independent or peer reviewed evaluation of it. The usage figures in the same release, 16 million monthly uses of Art's Insights summaries, describe a different feature.

Ask for any measured documentation time and note accuracy results from live sites, with the method and the number of clinicians.

General assurances that do not answer the questions ambient capture raises. Epic's Artificial Intelligence page describes a HIPAA compliant pipeline for its language models, and its Data Privacy Framework policy says Epic processes patient data for its healthcare customers, that staff access it only with permission, and that it passes to third parties only for uses customers authorize.

Nothing public states how long visit audio and transcripts are kept, by Epic or by Microsoft, whether they are excluded from training, or whether anything is de identified. For an ambient product those are the first questions, because the input is a recording of the whole visit.

Safety engineering, meaning guardrails, hallucination mitigation and how a safety event is handled, is not published, as it is not for any record in this index.

Ask for retention, training use and logging terms for audio and transcripts in writing.

A privacy document reaches the service, with no business associate statement. Epic's Data Privacy Framework policy, effective 13 March 2026, describes Epic as a data processor or service provider to its healthcare customers and says staff access patient data only with the customer's permission, and Epic's Artificial Intelligence page describes its generative pipeline as HIPAA compliant.

No public statement of business associate status, agreement terms, or how those terms extend to the speech and language processing Microsoft supplies for AI Charting exists; those sit in each customer's Epic contract.

Ask the Epic contract team whether switching on AI Charting adds Microsoft's processing to the existing agreement or needs new terms, and whether audio is covered.

Controls are asserted with nothing independent published. Epic's public pages describe a HIPAA compliant pipeline for its generative features and link privacy policies, but name no SOC 2 report, ISO/IEC 27001 or HITRUST certification, penetration testing cadence or trust center; compliance documentation reaches customers through Epic's login only UserWeb.

For self hosted customers much of this axis belongs to the health system's own environment, but the audio and transcription path runs through Microsoft, and Epic does not say which certifications cover it. Epic's chief security officer spoke about patching and an industry AI security initiative at the August 2026 meeting, which is posture rather than attestation.

Ask for Epic's and Epic Hosting's attestations, and for the certifications covering the Microsoft processing path.

No clearance is claimed and no regulatory position is published. The note drafting needs none. The order queuing is clinical content, but it is drawn from a conversation the clinician took part in and is placed only when the clinician accepts it, so the basis of each suggestion is in front of the person accountable for it.

Epic has not said publicly how it classifies the feature or whether queued orders are positioned as decision support. Held at C with that gap stated.

Ask Epic for its written regulatory analysis of order queuing, and whether any queued order can be placed without a clinician accepting it.

Nothing Epic publishes says how AI Charting's behavior is governed or tested. The release, the Artificial Intelligence page and the privacy policies carry no evaluation of draft accuracy, no responsible AI policy specific to ambient documentation, and no results by language, accent, specialty or patient group; product documentation sits behind Epic's customer login.

The gap matters more for ambient capture than for text features, because recognition quality varies with speech, and a part of the visit the system misheard leaves nothing in the note to flag it. With the feature live across more than 70 specialties, the evidence to measure it exists inside Epic's customers.

Ask Epic how AI Charting is tested before release and after model changes, and for any accuracy results by language and specialty.

Review before commit is the mechanism, and nothing stands behind the output. The note is a draft the clinician edits and signs, and queued orders wait for the clinician, so an error can be caught at the point of use with the chart beside it.

Epic publishes no error rate for drafted notes or queued orders, no limitations list, and no warranty, indemnity or remediation commitment for the feature, and no route is described for a patient harmed by an order that began as a suggestion.

Ask Epic what it commits to when a drafted note or queued order is wrong, and for any measured rate of drafts containing content that was not said in the visit.

The feature is part of Epic's own record system: it listens inside Epic's apps, reads the patient's medications, problems and history, and writes the note and queued orders into the same chart, with no interface to build. Being inside the record is not what earns this grade; the record system's exchange with systems outside it is.

Epic reported at its August 2026 meeting that 9.3 billion patient records were exchanged across 50 states and 10 countries, half of them between Epic and other record systems, and that 90 percent of Epic organizations are live or installing on TEFCA. Its interoperability page documents Care Everywhere, FHIR APIs and public interface specifications on open.epic. The chart AI Charting draws on can therefore include records received from other systems.

The reverse side, stated plainly: the feature runs only inside Epic and cannot be bought by an organization on another record system.

The record system runs where the customer's Epic runs, on its own infrastructure or with Epic Hosting, named in Epic's Data Privacy Framework policy. The speech and language processing comes through Microsoft on Azure, and Epic publishes nothing on where that processing runs, in which region, or how one customer's audio is separated from another's.

For the part of the feature that matters most to residency, the visit recording and its transcription, location is implied rather than committed.

Ask where audio is processed and stored, whether it stays in the customer's country, and how long it persists there.

No price, and the buying route can be established. AI Charting is available only to organizations running Epic, which license it from Epic as part of their existing relationship; Epic said in August 2025 that customers would be able to license it in 2026.

Whether it carries a charge beyond the existing Epic license, whether any charge scales by clinician or encounter, and what implementation work is needed are not published. The comparison a buyer faces is between a feature added to a system already licensed and a separately contracted scribe with its own price and its own integration.

Ask the Epic account team for the license terms and how they scale.

Coverage is stated clearly and nothing published validates it yet. Epic's release says its developers worked on site with physicians across many specialties, and at its August 2026 meeting Epic reported AI Charting live in more than 70 specialties and in several clinical roles, physicians, nurses, pharmacists and behavioral health among them, with the nursing version live at 11 health systems.

Those figures say where the feature is switched on, not where it has been shown to work. No results are published by specialty, by setting, or for inpatient against ambulatory use, and the feature is limited to organizations running Epic.

Ask which specialties and roles have measured results behind them, and how the nursing version differs from the physician version.