Lee Levin

This past week I interviewed Dale Gold, MD of NerdMDs and ACMIO for CommonSpirit Health’s Mountain Region. I wanted to share a quick excerpt that I found interesting given Epic's role in the healthcare AI landscape (note: you can get the full Q&A in Elion's weekly newsletter) ​​🟩 Epic has been very public about the many AI-first products they’re building. How do you think about when to go with an Epic-native product vs. looking at other solutions (either internally built or externally purchased)? 𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗲: The best strategic approach for health systems historically is to have an Epic-first mentality — meaning to understand their roadmap, where it's going, and try your best to align with that direction. This is important both in terms of your operational workflows — doing things the way that Epic is built so that you function within those frameworks — and in terms of reducing customization and personalization, which requires long-term maintenance and takes bandwidth away from your IT teams to innovate. At the same time, I believe it’s really important to build some of your own expertise and capabilities in this new area. Having it fully outsourced limits what you can learn and how you can innovate. So I think that there's a balance of doing some yourself — maybe not designing your own custom AI models, but having some expertise with editing them, prompting them, integrating them — so you're not fully reliant on external solutions. ​​🟩 Is there any whitespace you see today when it comes to building AI solutions? 𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗲: I think it's in-basket. I know people are working in that space, but it's such a hard problem to solve. An ideal solution would understand my preferences as a provider, the patient’s context, and how they like to be cared for, and then surface a set of decisions for me to make and help communicate next steps in a way that is clear, translated to a patient, and empathetic. ​​🟩 I agree with you. I’m curious if you think it’s because Epic has been vocal about the in-basket solution they’re building, or if there’s another reason we haven't seen more solutions. 𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗲: I think it’s just a hard problem to solve. Honestly, I don't know that Epic being involved scared people away, though I think Epic has an advantage in this space because they have access to the full chart. But I think that their true advantage is that they really put a lot of time and money into physician wellness and understanding what provider’s pain points are. They know more than anyone what a burden the in-basket is for providers. I suspect part of the challenge is finding the ROI in fixing the inbox. Where does the money come from? Solving the inbox impacts the patient experience, the provider experience, the wellness piece, and the quality piece. But finding the dollar signs takes a little bit more effort and takes organizations that are really motivated to do what's right by their providers and patients.

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