Epic’s annual User Group Meeting officially began today at its expansive headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin. The electronic health record leader is expected to unveil new artificial intelligence features and tools as health IT companies compete to stay ahead and keep pace with Silicon Valley innovations.
The health tech sector was abuzz last week amid rumors that Epic would introduce its own AI scribe. According to Politico, Epic is set to launch an ambient AI clinical documentation tool designed to transcribe physicians’ notes. On August 6, the company released a video showcasing its AI-powered charting capabilities.
Epic’s decision to offer its own AI scribe, while not entirely unexpected, places added pressure on AI startups. With 42% of the hospital market operating on Epic’s platform, the company wields significant influence as it expands its AI capabilities.
Investors have funneled nearly $1 billion into ambient AI companies so far in 2025, according to a Stat analysis. Ambient AI has emerged as the most successful application of AI in healthcare to date, attracting venture capital as firms compete to secure a stake in the growing market.
Key players include Abridge and Microsoft-owned Nuance, while startup Suki is experiencing rapid growth. The healthcare AI market is becoming increasingly competitive, with companies such as Eleos Health, Heidi Health, Nabla, and Ambience Healthcare raising substantial funding rounds this year.
Epic also maintains partnerships with several of these vendors, including Abridge and Microsoft’s DAX, and recently added Ambience to its Epic Toolbox under the ambient voice recognition category.
A recent MGMA survey found that 71% of physician practice leaders report using AI during patient visits. However, only 39% of those practices indicated that AI had reduced their workload. Many cited added complexity or being in early stages of AI adoption as reasons for the limited impact.
Epic is entering the AI scribe market later than some competitors: ambulatory EHR provider athenahealth launched ambient notes last year, Oracle Health offers a clinical AI assistant, and Elation Health, an EHR for primary care, has also introduced AI tools.
As AI-powered features become standard expectations, EHR companies are increasingly bundling copilots, including scribing, according to Brendan Keeler, interoperability practice lead at HTD Health.
Given its dominant position in health tech, Epic has taken a cautious approach to launching an AI scribe, noted Adam Farren, CEO of electronic medical record company Canvas Medical.
“When you’re in a position like Epic’s, you don’t necessarily chase every trend,” said Farren. “You have the opportunity to let others be on the front lines.”
“This is indeed a validation and a signal that AI scribes are here to stay,” he added. Canvas Medical has also made significant investments in AI, developing an open-source, AI-enabled clinical copilot for clinicians using the Canvas software development kit (SDK).
Epic has built its competitive moat over decades through a disciplined approach. “They’re traditionally not fast movers,” Farren noted.
By partnering with many AI scribe startups, Epic has gained insights into which use cases are effective and how end users deploy the software. “It’s a tremendous asset to have that discovery happening within their ecosystem,” he said.
Rumors suggest that Epic’s AI scribe will be priced around $80 per provider per month, significantly lower than most competitors, according to Maitreyee Joshi, founder and CEO of Avon Health. “Even if it doesn’t fully displace specialized AI scribes, it will almost certainly drive pricing pressure across the category,” she added.
Some industry executives anticipate the user interface for Epic’s AI scribe may be “clunky,” but Epic’s enormous reach provides a major advantage. “When 42% of the U.S. hospital market is already on your platform, user experience often takes a back seat to sheer network power. People will use it because they have to,” wrote Pallavi Agarwal, a health IT product manager, on LinkedIn.
Epic’s entry into ambient clinical documentation represents a major shift in the industry, though some executives view it as a milestone in AI adoption rather than a threat to AI scribe startups. Farren described it as marking the end of the “transcription wars,” with companies now focusing on driving downstream workflows.
Many AI scribe startups are expanding into other areas, such as revenue cycle management and coding, and Epic’s move pressures these companies to accelerate their “land and expand” strategies.
For example, Abridge recently announced it is developing an AI tool to speed up insurance approvals, partnering with Highmark Health to co-create a point-of-care prior authorization solution.
Speaking with Fierce Healthcare, Abridge CEO Shiv Rao, M.D., emphasized their deep integration strategy: “It’s about going millions of miles deep into health systems’ clinical and operational workflows. Generating notes, providing actionable cues to clinicians, helping close care gaps, managing prior authorizations—this is just the beginning. We’re building capabilities for order entry, compliant revenue cycle documentation, ICD coding, and prior authorizations. The possibilities are limitless.”
“It’s an exciting moment,” he said. “It feels like the industry is finally embracing AI, recognizing it as a fundamental part of healthcare infrastructure—it’s table stakes.”
Punit Soni, CEO and founder of Suki, explained that his company is building a comprehensive AI assistant for providers that extends beyond ambient documentation to include dictation, coding, order staging, patient summaries, and Q&A. Soni told Fierce Healthcare that Suki has a “widespread, diversified footprint” that is “not dependent on any single EHR, market segment, or geography.”
The platform integrates with major enterprise EHRs including Epic, Oracle Health, athenahealth, and Meditech, and Zoom leverages Suki’s AI engine to generate clinical notes and integrate AI capabilities into its solutions.
Suki also provides a robust SDK and suite of APIs to enable integration of AI and ambient capabilities into other healthcare applications.
“This creates a significant advantage, because AI relies on data from multiple sources and use cases to build models that work universally—and we’ve been able to pull that together,” Soni said.
He emphasized that one EHR company adding AI features does not materially affect Suki’s strategy.
“The revenue percentage from any single EHR or market sub-segment is relatively small, so a decision by one or many of them doesn’t fundamentally change our approach,” he told Fierce Healthcare. “We are focused on building a broad AI platform for healthcare, not just an AI feature within an EHR, and we will continue on that path.”
Epic’s AI scribe, he noted, will provide budget-conscious providers with access to ambient AI technology, according to Vig Chandramouli, partner at Oak HC/FT and an investor in Ambience.
“My hope is that ambient scribing eventually becomes available to 100% of providers nationwide,” he said. “If companies like Abridge, Ambience, and Epic all contribute to that vision, that’s fantastic. Ultimately, some providers will want higher coding accuracy, while others may just want a straightforward scribe. This ecosystem allows people to choose the solution that works best for them.”
While AI scribe startups often dominate headlines, Microsoft has been developing voice-enabled ambient AI tools and generative AI features for clinicians since acquiring Nuance Communications for nearly $20 billion in 2021.
Epic and Microsoft have maintained a collaborative relationship for several years. In 2023, Epic announced it would leverage Microsoft’s AI expertise to deploy generative AI-powered copilots. The following year, the companies partnered with hospitals and health systems—including Advocate Health, Duke Health, Intermountain Health, and Stanford Health Care—to build AI solutions using ambient technology aimed at streamlining nursing documentation.
Epic’s entry into AI scribes also overlaps with Microsoft’s healthcare AI initiatives. In March, Microsoft launched Dragon Copilot, an AI assistant for healthcare professionals combining Dragon Medical One’s natural language speech recognition with the ambient listening capabilities of DAX Copilot.
“If I were Epic, I’d let startups like Abridge and Ambience in, but my real focus would be on Microsoft,” Farren said. “If this technology is viable and gives a foothold into clinical end users, Microsoft is the bigger competitive concern than Abridge.”
“The question becomes: how do I move fastest to prevent Microsoft from encroaching? One approach is to collaborate with startups and see what they can create. In this case, they built something incredibly valuable, quickly—likely exceeding Epic’s expectations and accelerating their own AI efforts,” he added.
