Epic's Ask Emmie offers EHR-backed AI chatbot option for patients
The Ask Emmie AI chatbot is embedded in Epic's patient portal, rooting interactions in the patient's health history, offering agentic functions and ensuring HIPAA compliance.
Epic's new Ask Emmie chatbot isn't going to write you poems or research the history of the Western world, according to Trevor Berceau, an R&D director at the EHR giant. But it could help provide a new, HIPAA-compliant, healthcare-focused chatbot option for consumers as health IT developers adjust to a marketplace defined by ChatGPT and similar tools.
"Ask Emmie is very much in the healthcare and wellness space, but it has been tuned to answer a broad range of questions," Berceau said in a recent interview. "Whenever a patient is coming in with a need related to their health, we want them to be confident that this is going to be the tool that can help them get that answer."
The technology is an iteration of the AI agent, Emmie -- no "Ask" -- which Epic launched in August 2025 to help patients navigate MyChart, including with scheduling appointments and navigating the patient financial experience.
Ask Emmie, unveiled last month at the HIMSS conference, takes those agentic functions a step further by offering a conversational component. Epic says Ask Emmie can answer patients' health-related questions within the context of the patient portal and health system workflows.
The launch timing is unsurprising, following early 2026, when numerous AI chatbots tailored for healthcare were launched by tech giants traditionally dominant in the consumer space. OpenAI's ChatGPT Health, Anthropic's Claude for Healthcare and Microsoft's Copilot Health stand out as just a few examples.
But Ask Emmie isn't exactly a replica of those tools, or even Amazon One Medical's Health AI assistant, Berceau said.
"Emmie always having that grounding in the patient chart, we've found, makes a pretty big difference from an accuracy and safety standpoint," he explained.
That difference could be crucial, as industry experts stress the importance of complementing patient AI use with strong patient–provider connections. And that's not to mention the privacy and security questions raised with these chatbots, most of which are not HIPAA-compliant but offer other security protections.
"We, as an EHR company and a maker of patient tools for managing health, are exactly the type of group that should be creating and deploying these [chatbots]," Berceau said.
Epic responds to consumer AI demand
Earlier this year, OpenAI released groundbreaking numbers about how many people use its flagship product, ChatGPT, to learn more about their health and well-being. Of the 800 million regular ChatGPT users, around a quarter ask a healthcare-related question weekly, OpenAI said, citing an internal assessment of the company's data.
In other words, people want to use AI chatbots to learn more about and manage their health.
The team at Epic was hearing similar things from their customers and patient users, who indicated to the developer that Emmie should go beyond the scope of helping users navigate MyChart.
"If we're going to really meet patients' needs, we need to be able to take a much broader view on answering questions about certainly their chart, but also symptoms they or their kids might be having or general wellness information," Berceau noted.
"On the tech side of things, we've all been playing with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok -- basically any AI tool that comes out -- and seeing the potential there," he continued. "This could actually have some pretty amazing impact if we were able to put it in the patients' hands in the context of their chart and in a place where their data is going to stay private and secure."
Thus, a vision for Ask Emmie started to materialize.
Designing Emmie for patient safety and care access
Like many Epic products, Berceau said Ask Emmie was designed after talking with customers and patients. Through usability testing, the development team was able to refine what types of questions patients might ask and build out different pathways to get them the answers they need.
At the center of Emmie's core capabilities is its connection back into the patient chart, but Ask Emmie also has agentic capabilities.
For example, a father querying Emmie about his son's pink eye symptoms won't just get a confirmation of diagnosis and a suggestion to see a doctor. Emmie can make that doctor visit happen by putting the user in the queue for a virtual telehealth visit.
"It can make that handoff to that next step really seamless," Berceau said. "I could have certainly done that before but would've had to connect some dots myself."
And in a healthcare industry characterized by complexity and long appointment wait times, that agentic component makes a big difference in the consumer experience. That's not to mention the impact it has on continuity of care, as early data shows 42% of those using an AI chatbot don't follow up with a doctor after.
Balancing privacy with transparency
AI chatbots for healthcare haven't been perfected yet, Berceau acknowledged, already alluding to areas where Epic is working to advance Ask Emmie.
For example, Epic and its peers in the industry still don't have a great answer for looping healthcare providers into AI conversations without compromising patient privacy. On the one hand, allowing providers insight into conversations with Ask Emmie could deepen the patient–provider relationship and open the door to richer conversations during appointments.
On the other hand, there is an argument for patient privacy, especially given that a quarter of patients prefer to use a chatbot to ask about embarrassing symptoms, per 2026 Zocdoc data.
"It is a careful balance between how we use the information to create transparency in situations where it will improve trust but not expose it in a situation where it will undermine trust," Berceau explained.
"With what we've released today, the care team does not have access to see the chat transcripts or anything like that from what the patients are talking about with Emmie," he emphasized.
That doesn't mean there aren't scenarios in which there'd be a clear benefit to share Emmie's interactions. In addition to enhancing patient–provider communication, the bot could also initiate patient intake, saving time during appointments.
But this process needs to be judicious, as privacy and security are paramount to Epic and the providers and patients it serves, Berceau emphasized.
Still, Epic's foray into patient-facing AI could be a step forward overall in terms of security, as the technology is HIPAA-compliant. While the EHR vendor is reluctant to dictate which chatbots are best for getting health-related information, Berceau did say that the general opacity around privacy and security across all consumer health tech is concerning.
As for getting patients to chat with Emmie before other AIs? Berceau said he hopes the chatbot's performance can speak for itself.
"We need to make Emmy the tool that people prefer to use because it's more useful and it's more helpful," he concluded. "It's giving them the answers and those clear next steps, and it's just going to a deeper level than they get elsewhere."
Sara Heath has reported news related to patient engagement and health equity since 2015.
