Epic Launches 'Launchpad' Program to Accelerate Generative AI Adoption in Healthcare
Dubbed "Launchpad," the program is designed to offer guided, structured support to fast-track AI deployment and overcome common adoption barriers.
Electronic Health Record (EHR) giant Epic Systems has unveiled a new initiative to help healthcare organizations accelerate the implementation and operationalization of generative AI technologies across clinical and administrative workflows.
Dubbed "Launchpad," the program is designed to offer guided, structured support to fast-track AI deployment and overcome common adoption barriers.
Helping Providers Operationalize Gen AI Workflows
Epic's Launchpad program, announced in a recent LinkedIn post, is positioned as a strategic solution to help healthcare organizations rapidly transition from concept to live generative AI workflows.
Organizations will receive customized support, implementation kits, and governance guidance through hands-on collaboration with Epic experts to ensure success in their AI deployments.
Sean McGunigal, Director of Artificial Intelligence at Epic, explained the rationale behind the Launchpad initiative in an interview with Fierce Healthcare.
"We found that generative AI encounters a little bit of roadblocks in turning on and using it effectively and monitoring," McGunigal said. For organizations unfamiliar with AI, these roadblocks can halt projects altogether.
Launchpad addresses this by offering step-by-step guidance from Epic staff, who serve as "shepherds" to guide organizations through use case configuration, activation, and governance setup.
Addressing AI Literacy & Governance Challenges
One of the central hurdles to AI adoption is the varying degree of AI literacy across healthcare organizations. Some institutions are well-versed in artificial intelligence, while others are just beginning to explore its capabilities.
According to McGunigal, Launchpad's objective is to tailor support based on each organization's unique needs and readiness levels. In addition to training, another major obstacle is governance.
"Governance has existed at healthcare organizations for quite some time, and it was attuned to what I would consider is pre-generative AI forms of AI," said McGunigal.
Traditional AI governance frameworks, built around statistical models with well-defined performance metrics, may not align well with generative AI's more fluid and assistive nature.
As part of Launchpad, Epic helps institutions revise their governance protocols to accommodate these new AI paradigms.
Project Management, Not Performance, is the Key Bottleneck
Interestingly, the main bottleneck in gen AI rollouts isn't performance or end-user training—areas often assumed to be the primary concern—but project management.
"The roadblocks tend not to be necessarily performance challenges or end-user training," McGunigal said. "It tends to be the project management-type work."
For organizations lacking internal champions to drive AI initiatives, Epic steps in to facilitate coordination, align stakeholders, and maintain project momentum. This form of assistance ensures that projects don't stall before reaching implementation.
A Growing Portfolio of Gen AI Use Cases
Since launching its first generative AI solution—MyChart In-Basket Augmented Response Technology (ART)—in April 2023, Epic has seen rapid uptake among its customer base. ART, which assists clinicians by drafting responses to patient messages, has already been adopted by 180 Epic customers.
In total, 377 Epic clients are using at least one generative AI feature, meaning over half of Epic's customers have begun integrating the technology.
The Launchpad program includes a starter kit featuring 10 high-impact generative AI use cases to promote further uptake. These are designed to be turned on almost immediately and span a range of applications, from provider-facing tools to backend administrative aids.
"This is a group of generative AI features that we think every organization really should turn on basically immediately," said McGunigal.
"These features cross different areas of the health system. Some are provider-facing, some backend-facing, and others are small tools accessible to all system users."
Tangible Outcomes & Time Savings
Epic's deliberate, outcomes-focused approach to generative AI is already yielding measurable benefits. According to the company, generative AI tools like ART save clinicians valuable time and improve communication quality.
For example, Mayo Clinic, one of the earliest adopters of Epic's generative AI tools, reported that ART saves nurses approximately 30 seconds per patient message while generating more empathetic responses.
These time savings add up significantly across a large volume of messages, helping reduce clinician burnout and increase patient satisfaction.
"We were very deliberate with the initial generative AI use cases to be solving problems. We don't want to just have shiny, cool tools for providers to use," McGunigal noted.
"We know there's a problem in the system, and we know that generative AI is one of, if not the only, way to solve that problem."
Looking Ahead: Building Towards Agentic AI
Epic isn't stopping at traditional generative AI implementations. The company is investing heavily in the development of agentic AI, a new paradigm in which AI agents can take proactive actions, understand chart data, and automate complex tasks within the EHR ecosystem.
At the HIMSS25 conference in March, Epic executives highlighted that the company has 125 generative AI features currently under development.
Seth Howard, Epic's Vice President of R&D, revealed that the company is now focused on creating an agentic platform that enables AI agents to perform sophisticated functions with more configurability and personalization.
"We've woven AI into the foundational capabilities of Epic, and we've been working towards an agentic platform for the past year or so," Howard said.
"Agents are a new development paradigm when it comes to deploying generative AI, and it's going to offer more flexibility, more configurability and personalization, and ultimately, I think, a lot more use cases than generative AI."
McGunigal echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the transformative potential of agentic systems. "We think that with a lot of the work we're doing on the platform side for supporting agents, the potential to leverage generative AI to streamline a lot of workflows in the system is immense," he said.
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