Oracle announces new electronic health record powered by AI

Oracle unveiled a new electronic health record on Tuesday, its biggest healthcare product update since acquiring medical records giant Cerner for $28 billion in 2022.

An electronic health record, or EHR, is a digital version of a patient's medical history that doctors and nurses update over time. EHR software may be complex and cumbersome for physicians, but it has become an integral component of the modern US healthcare system.

Oracle's latest EHR is equipped with cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities that will make it easier to navigate and configure, the company said. There are no menus or drop-down screens and doctors can get the information they need by asking questions with their voice. Ideally, this will allow doctors to spend less time searching through records and more time caring for patients, Oracle said.

“It's not just a scribe. It's not an assistant. It's almost like having your own resident,” Seema Verma, executive vice president and CEO of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, told CNBC in an interview.

Oracle's new offering could help boost its position within the fiercely competitive EHR market, where it has struggled to maintain its position in recent years. In 2023, Oracle experienced the largest net hospital loss ever recorded, while market leader Epic Systems, Oracle's main rival, was the only company to see a net increase in critical care market share, according to a report from KLASResearch.

Cerner contributed $5.9 billion to Oracle's total revenue in fiscal 2023. Epic generated $4.9 billion in revenue last year.

The new EHR has been in the works since Oracle acquired Cerner, but it was not built on top of Cerner's existing infrastructure, Verma said. That means current Cerner customers will have to decide whether to migrate to the separate system.

“Just think about the infrastructure of a house that's falling apart; you're not going to put new things on top of it,” he said. “That was the conclusion we came to when we looked at Cerner's technology, so what we're bringing to the market is something completely new.”

Suhas Uliyar, senior vice president of healthcare and clinical AI product management at Oracle, walked CNBC through a virtual demo of the new EHR. It showed what it would be like for a doctor to catch up, answer messages and fill prescriptions before a day packed with patient visits.

The EHR is browser-based, and doctors will see a search bar and a chronological list of their appointments when they open it. The interface is very simple. A doctor can click on the microphone in the search bar and ask questions like: “How many openings do I have for today?” or “How many new patients do I have scheduled for today?” The doctor will then get an AI-generated response within seconds.

If a doctor clicks on a patient, they will open their record, where they can find AI summaries as well as more detailed explanations of their medical history. The doctor can see what has changed since the patient's last visit, if the patient is taking any new medications, and other details such as lab results, clinical documentation, previous treatments, risk factors, messages, allergies, and vital signs.

Additionally, the doctor can click on the microphone and ask patient-specific questions such as “Have you ever complained of panic attacks or difficulty breathing?”, “Have you had a CT scan to detect lung cancer and Are your vaccinations up to date?” or “What antibiotics have you treated your urinary tract infection with?”

“He goes through all the history, all the records, and he gives me a very specific answer,” Uliyar said. “I didn't have to go through 15 different documents and find it.”

Voice-activated questions can complement each other, and the EHR's AI will begin to learn the doctor's habits, such as the types of medications they prescribe and frequently refill. Even when Uliyar stumbled over his words or didn't ask a question exactly correctly, the system still got the information he was looking for.

If a doctor wants to go into more detail or verify an AI-generated response within the new EHR, they can always click on the appointment and review the original record being referenced, Uliyar said. And responses that include content such as medication dosage information or other evidence-based recommendations will be linked to validated databases, he added.

While Oracle has been developing its new EHR, the company has also been rolling out features to existing Cerner customers to try to improve their experience with the product. Uliyar said many of these features, including Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent (previously called Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant), are already integrated into the new EHR.

Oracle announced the general availability of Clinical AI Agent in June and aims to automate much of the documentation that physicians are responsible for.

Doctors can access the AI ​​Clinical Agent through an app on their phone and press a button to record their patient visits. Once they stop recording, Oracle AI automatically generates a clinical note based on the appointment, so doctors can They no longer need to write it themselves.

About 70 clients are already using the AI ​​clinical agent, Uliyar said. The company is currently building a similar tool for nurses.

Since the AI ​​clinical agent is already integrated into the new EHR, customers won't have to worry about integrating it. The tool will also continue to be available as a standalone product that is independent of EHRs, Uliyar said.

Oracle's new EHR early adoption program begins next year, and Oracle said it will work with customers to determine the customizations they need. The company has been moving its healthcare clients to the cloud, which should make the EHR implementation process much easier, Verma said.

“We consider it very damaging to the market,” he said. “Our EHR will solve many long-standing problems we've had in healthcare.”