Epic UGM 2026 Takeaways: What Healthcare Leaders Should Be Watching
Epic UGM 2026
Where Epic Is Headed and What It Means for Healthcare
This year’s Epic UGM gave us a lot to think about. The focus on AI was unmistakable, but what stood out to me wasn’t just the volume of new technology—it was the potential for some of these capabilities to meaningfully change how patients, providers, and healthcare organizations experience care.
I left energized by where Epic is heading, while also thinking about what it will take to translate innovation into real-world impact.
Here are a few things I’m watching.
AI + Cosmos: Big potential for better insights
Epic is incredibly well-positioned to use the scale of its data to advance trusted AI. I’m especially excited about the potential to identify health risks and connect symptoms or patterns that could point to rare diseases.
As the wife of a rare disease patient and mother of a carrier, this one is personal. The possibility of using data to recognize connections that might otherwise take years to surface could be incredibly meaningful.
Ergo was probably what I was most excited to see.
Of course, the opportunity isn’t simply to introduce more AI into healthcare. It’s to determine where AI can responsibly help clinicians make better decisions, improve the patient experience, or reduce unnecessary friction.
Better-informed patients
Another capability that caught my attention was visualizing outcomes for a patient’s current treatment compared with similar patients receiving another treatment.
That could meaningfully change shared decision-making.
The physician remains at the helm, as they should. But patients could have a clearer way to understand the real-world data informing their options and participate more meaningfully in decisions about their care.
To me, that’s one of the most promising applications of healthcare data: not replacing clinical judgment, but making better information more accessible.
Flower Pot + Inpatient Garden Plot: Could Epic reach smaller organizations?
I’m very interested in whether Flower Pot and Inpatient Garden Plot can bring Epic to smaller healthcare organizations.
Functionality matters, but so does price. A small orthopedic group and a critical-access rural hospital operate under very different economics than a large health system. If these offerings can make Epic more accessible to organizations that historically haven’t had the scale or resources to adopt it, that could be significant.
And speaking of rural health—it was fantastic to see Avera Health highlighted in Judy’s keynote. The care they provide across their communities is remarkable. With the continued focus on rural health transformation, helping these organizations access available federal funding and make sustainable technology investments should be a priority.
Agent Factory: I’m interested, but watching closely
A client recently attended an agent DIY factory and came away with clear use cases, which is encouraging. But Epic still did much of the actual building.
I’m hoping usability for non-developers becomes a major focus.
The real test won’t simply be whether organizations can build agents. It will be whether the people closest to the business problem can safely and sustainably build, modify, and manage them without creating another dependency on scarce technical resources.
One very practical takeaway
The improvements to the executive Epic packet seem MUCH more focused. If you’re an Epic client, ask for the new version.
Not every meaningful improvement has to be revolutionary. Sometimes making existing information easier for leaders to understand and act on is a pretty big win. 😊
Rangers—and the importance of independent advice
Rangers is the announcement I left with the most questions about.
I understand the value of Epic-trained ongoing services. Product expertise matters, especially in healthcare’s complex technology environments.
But there’s an important distinction between product expertise and independent advice.
Many of our clients work with Doret precisely because we aren’t employed by a technology company. Our responsibility is to the client—not a platform.
When the organization advising you also benefits financially from greater adoption of its product, there is naturally a commercial incentive attached to that advice. That doesn’t make the advice wrong. It means the incentives are different.
A truly independent advisor can say: Buy more. Use what you already own. Choose another tool. Or don’t spend the money at all.
Sometimes the answer is new technology. Sometimes it’s fixing a process, improving the data, or getting more value from technology you already own.
That’s why I continue to believe in strategy first, technology second. It’s also core to Doret’s approach: aligning technology to clinical, operational, and growth goals rather than forcing those goals to fit a particular tool.
Start with the problem we’re solving for patients, providers, and healthcare organizations. Then determine the right technology—or combination of technologies—to solve it.
Overall, I left UGM energized by where Epic is heading, particularly around AI, data, and the potential to improve how healthcare is delivered and experienced.
The innovation is exciting. Now comes the part that matters most: turning it into measurable, real-world impact.
Want to go deeper on the strategy-first approach? We’ve written more about how health systems can think about Epic and Salesforce together—not as an either/or technology decision, but based on the problems each platform is best positioned to solve.
Read: Epic and Salesforce Integration: A Better Way to Think About It →
