UW Health's medication safety audits demand staff open thousands of patient charts manually, a process so slow that completing a single audit takes months. Now, the health system is working with Epic Systems to develop AI agents that could compress that timeline to minutes while keeping sensitive data inside the electronic health record.
Dan Schenkat, UW Health Pharmacy Informatics and Analytics Leader, and Mike Reed, a member of the pharmacy informatics team, are among representatives from nearly 20 healthcare systems gathered at Epic's Verona campus this week. The "build-a-thon" aims to pilot AI agents embedded directly in Epic's EHR software, eliminating the need to send protected patient information to third-party vendors.
"The integrated electronic health record has become the source of all the work that we do in healthcare, and so being able to use that information that's already in that EHR and use it to do the work better and more effectively is huge," Schenkat said. "Having it all within Epic keeps that garden walled off and more secure."
What the AI agents are being trained to do
Health system employees at the build-a-thon focused on automating some of healthcare's most repetitive tasks. The training covered checking prescription refills against clinical protocols, reviewing medication histories before patient admission, and identifying patients at higher risk of canceling procedures because they lack transportation.
These AI Agents & Automation efforts build on Epic's earlier work. The company's first build-a-thon in May produced nearly a dozen working AI agents, some of which Epic announced at its annual User Group Meeting in August. Before that event, Epic asked users for feedback on what they wanted AI agents to handle and received more than 1,300 submissions.
From months to minutes
For UW Health, the stakes are clear. Current medication safety audits require staff to examine whether clinicians follow internal medication policies, evaluate reasons for non-compliance, and assess whether medications justify their cost. The manual nature of opening each chart individually limits how many audits the organization can complete annually.
Real-time AI agents embedded in Epic would check medication orders against hospital policies as they occur, rather than retrospectively. What now takes months could finish in minutes, Schenkat said.
Epic's approach to building with users
Early adopters of Epic's build-your-own AI agent technology will gain access starting in late October or early November. Derek De Young, Epic's director of research and development, said the on-site collaboration reveals workflow realities that remote development misses.
"There's only so much you can do from here in Verona," De Young said. "You can imagine challenges, but once you sit alongside someone and you see what they're doing on the screen, or the challenges that they see, what's on their desk, everything surrounding their workflow, you really understand what needs to be done."
Why this matters for healthcare professionals
For pharmacy informatics teams and clinical staff, the shift toward embedded AI agents changes the audit model from periodic, backward-looking reviews to continuous, real-time oversight. That means catching policy deviations when they happen rather than months later. The approach also addresses a persistent security concern: every time patient data leaves the EHR for analysis by an external tool, it creates a potential exposure point. Keeping the AI inside Epic's environment reduces that risk while giving clinicians faster feedback on medication decisions.
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