Is Epic Stifling Health IT Innovation?

In many ways and definitely based on the buzz, Epic is at the top of the hospital EMR market. According to one estimate, about 40 percent of the U.S. population has its medical information stored in an Epic EMR, a stunning number given the level of competition in the hospital EMR space.

The question is, what impact is that having on the EMR marketplace?  According to one piece posted this week by Medical Economics,  Epic may be stifling health IT innovation due to its nearly-unassailable market lead.

As readers probably know, Epic has established an empire built around antiquated technology (MUMPS), which essentially forces any company that hopes to interoperate to bear its MUMPS core in mind. We’re talking the blunted edge here.

Perhaps more importantly, now that Epic has such a dominant market share, if it chooses to keep a closed system in place, customers will only get what innovations are driven internally by Epic.  If hospitals want innovations emerging outside the Epic bubble, they’ll have to consider the staggering costs — in some cases in the hundreds of millions of dollars — of switching outright to another vendor. If that doesn’t stifle innovation I don’t know what does.

This situation hasn’t been lost on healthcare industry leaders, some of whom have begun to balk at Epic’s rise, Medical Economics reports.

As the piece notes, Epic has attracted outspoken critics that question whether Epic’s’ market dominance is bad for the health IT world as a whole. One of those critics is Paul Levy, former CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who has taken shots at the EMR giant from his “Not Running A Hospital” blog.

Levy, who Medical Economics cites as one of Epic’s toughest opponents, has been known to compare customers’ relationship with Epic to Stockholm Syndrome, a condition occurring when hostages begin to sympathize and identify with their captors.

All that being said, at the  moment, there’s little critics can do to change Epic’s business practices or development plans. Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission will step in at some point if it appears to staff there that Epic’s market control is anti-competitive.   In the mean time, though, Epic seems to have a lock on the hospital marketplace — and a disproportionate role in shaping the future of EMRs generally.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

2 Comments

  • Epic’s polices and practices make it a very closed system. That WITH its large market share can cause problems for the industry. I agree with your raising this flag of concern.

    However, to suggest that it is because of the M language serves only to mislead and repeat an incorrect stereotype. Along with Epic, M is the basis for the most open, freely available, well documented and positively reviewed EHR :VistA. VisTA is open source, and uses standard features for interoperability like HL7 and XML. M is used in Epic and VistA because it works.

    Want to learn VistA and M, take a college course, read all the documentation, take the online tutorials or just download the code and “run” a hospital on your laptop.

    Many have asked on web forums, “How do I become Epic certified if I don’t work for an Epic site?” The only answer I have seen is “You can’t”. That is a closed system. M is open and doing quite well thank you.

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories