Epic, the electronic health record (EHR) company, said on Oct. 21 that it is opening a way for outside software to plug into its artificial intelligence assistants. Called Connectors, the new capability lets Epic’s AI for patients, clinicians and back-office staff look up information in third-party applications and complete tasks there, so that users do not have to switch between apps and portals. Developer-built Connectors will be listed on Epic Showroom, the company’s app marketplace, from March 2027.
The announcement, published on Epic’s newsroom on the day of its Open@Epic conference in Verona, Wisconsin, describes Connectors as capabilities that app developers build to link their products to Epic. They work in two directions. A Connector can bring information into Epic when it is needed, such as pulling an ambulance app’s estimated arrival time so an emergency department can prepare. And it can let Epic take action in the other app.
Which AI tools get Connectors
Connectors are built for Epic’s three named AI assistants: Emmie, its AI for patients, which runs in the MyChart portal; Art, its AI for clinicians; and Penny, its AI for revenue cycle and operational teams. They also work with custom AI agents that health systems create in Agent Factory, Epic’s tool for building their own agents.
Epic gave three examples. A hospitalized patient could ask Emmie for a meal, and Emmie would place the order in the hospital’s dietary management application. Emmie could use a Connector to give a patient wayfinding directions inside a hospital. And for a surgical team, Epic could check a medical equipment application to see whether assistive devices are available and help the team gather what a patient will need for recovery.
“Emmie could use a Connector to bring hospital wayfinding instructions to the patient,” said Johnston Thayer, Epic’s vice president of health informatics, in the announcement. Derek De Young, who leads development of Agent Factory at Epic, said: “I can’t wait to see what developers and healthcare organizations create with them.”
Before a Connector is switched on, Epic said, a healthcare organization can review what it is able to do, what information it can read and what it can change. Epic is now releasing the capability for developers to build Connectors, but gave no date for that. Two early partners were quoted. Russ Thomas, chief executive of Availity, said “AI has tremendous potential to transform healthcare administration.” Joshua Titus, chief executive of the wayfinding company Gozio Health, said: “Bringing wayfinding into a conversation with Emmie opens the door to guiding patients.”
A busy month for Epic
Connectors was one of several announcements Epic made in October. On Oct. 15 the company said it will release a Prescription Marketplace in summer 2027 that lets clinicians and patients compare what a medication would cost at different pharmacies, with and without insurance, before the prescription is sent. Any pharmacy will be able to share its cash prices with health systems that use Epic. Amazon Pharmacy, Costco and Eli Lilly were due to join an Epic panel on medication affordability at Open@Epic on Oct. 21. Epic said its existing Real-Time Prescription Benefit tool, which shows what a patient will pay under insurance, helped patients save more than $250 million in 2025.
On Oct. 19 Epic described a new connection with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that lets VA staff book a veteran’s specialist appointment with a participating Epic health system in a single interaction, with real-time visibility into the provider’s schedule, replacing phone calls and faxes. Epic health systems can also check a patient’s veteran status with the VA automatically, which care teams used to identify more than 300,000 veterans in the past year, Epic said.
Why it matters
Much of the work that happens around a patient, from meal orders to equipment, transport and pharmacy, runs in software that is not the EHR. If Epic’s assistants can reach into those systems, the EHR becomes the place where tasks are started rather than one of many portals a nurse or patient has to open. That is attractive to health systems trying to reduce clicks, and to vendors, for whom a Connector is a way to be reachable from inside Epic.
It also concentrates more activity on one platform. The review step Epic describes, in which an organization sees what a Connector can read and change before enabling it, will matter, because an AI agent placing orders or retrieving data in outside systems raises questions about permissions and auditing that the announcement does not address in detail.
What to watch
Epic has given no date for when developers can start building Connectors; health systems will be able to find developer-built ones on Epic Showroom from March 2027. Prescription Marketplace is scheduled for summer 2027.
The caveats
This is a vendor announcement with partner endorsements, not an independent evaluation. No Connector is yet available to health systems, and Epic published no figures on how many developers are building them. The announcement does not describe the underlying technical standard, how data access is logged, or how errors by an AI agent acting in another app would be handled. The prescription and VA items are likewise Epic’s own accounts.
This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a qualified clinician. Corrections: email the editor using the address on the Contact page.
