Oracle unveils new electronic medical records powered by AI

oracle announced a brand new electronic medical record on Tuesday. This is the company’s most significant healthcare product update since its $28 billion acquisition of medical records giant Cerner in 2022.

An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that is updated over time by doctors and nurses. Although EHR software can be complex and cumbersome for clinicians to use, it has become an essential component of the modern U.S. healthcare system.

Oracle’s latest EHR is equipped with cloud and artificial intelligence features to make it easier to navigate and set up, the company said. There are no menus or drop-down screens, and doctors can elicit the information they need by asking spoken questions. Ideally, this would 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 just an assistant. It’s like you have your own personal resident,” Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said in an interview with CNBC.

Oracle’s new products could help boost its position within the competitive EHR market, where it has struggled to maintain its foothold in recent years. According to a report from KLAS Research, Oracle had the largest net hospital loss ever in 2023, while the only company with a net gain in acute care market share was market leader Epic Systems, Oracle’s closest rival. That’s what it means.

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 wasn’t built on Cerner’s existing infrastructure, Verma said. This means current Cerner customers must decide whether to migrate to another system.

“Think of the crumbling infrastructure in your home. You can’t build something new on top of that,” she says. “That was the conclusion we came to when we looked at Cerner technology. So what we’re bringing to market is completely new.”

Suhas Uriyal, Oracle’s senior vice president of product management for clinical and healthcare AI, walked CNBC through a virtual demo of the new EHR. He showed us what it’s like for a doctor to stay on top of things, respond to messages, and fill prescriptions before a day full of seeing patients.

The EHR is browser-based and when opened by a physician, displays a search bar and a chronological list of appointments. The interface is very simple. Physicians can click the microphone in the search bar and ask questions like “How many openings do you have today?” or “How many new patients are on schedule today?” Physicians receive AI-generated answers within seconds.

When a doctor clicks on a patient, the medical record opens with an AI summary and a more detailed description of the patient’s medical history. Doctors can see details such as changes since a patient’s last visit, whether they are taking new medications, test results, clinical documentation, past treatments, risk factors, messages, allergies, vitals, and more.

Additionally, the doctor can click into the microphone to provide patient-specific information such as “Has she ever had a panic attack or shortness of breath?” “Has she had a CT scan for lung cancer? Is her vaccination up to date?” You can ask questions. or “Which antibiotic treated her urinary tract infection?”

“It’s looking at the entire history, all the records, and it gives us very specific answers,” Uriyal said. “I didn’t have to scroll through 15 different documents to find one.”

Voice-activated questions can be built on top of each other, and the EHR’s AI begins to learn the doctor’s habits, such as the types of medications he or she prescribes or frequently refills. Even when Uriyal stumbled over his words or phrased his questions incorrectly, the system retrieved the information he was looking for.

If a physician wants to further examine or double-check an AI-generated answer within the new EHR, Uriyal said, they can always click on a quote and read the original record referenced. I did. Responses, including content such as dosage information and other evidence-based recommendations, will also be linked to a verified database, he added.

While Oracle is developing the new EHR, it is rolling out features to Cerner’s existing customers to improve their experience with the product. Uliyar said many of these features are already built into the new EHR, including the Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent (previously known as Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant).

Oracle announced the general availability of Clinical AI Agent in June. The goal is to automate much of the documentation that doctors are responsible for.

Physicians access the Clinical AI Agent through an app on their phone and press a button to record their patient encounters. Once recording is stopped, Oracle’s AI automatically generates clinical notes based on the appointment, eliminating the need for physicians to write clinical notes themselves.

Uriyal said about 70 customers are already using Clinical AI Agent. The company is currently developing a similar tool for nurses.

Clinical AI Agent is already built into new EHRs, so customers don’t have to worry about integration. Uriyal said the tool will also continue to be available as a standalone product that does not rely on EHRs.

The early adoption program for Oracle’s new EHR will begin next year, and Oracle said it will work with customers to determine any customizations needed. The company is moving its healthcare customers to the cloud, which should make the EHR implementation process much easier, Verma said.

“We see it as very disruptive to the market,” she said. “Our EHR will solve a lot of problems that have existed in the medical field for years.”