At Epic’s 2023 User Group Meeting (#epicugm), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Sumit Rana, Senior Vice President at Epic sat down for a one-on-one conversation about generative AI. Their conversation was fascinating on two levels. First, it was surprising that they did not speak to the deeper partnership between the two companies that was announced in the hours ahead of their time on stage. Second, was the blink-and-you-missed-it difference between how the two men view generative AI.
Deeper Partnership Between Epic and Microsoft
Early on Tuesday morning an announcement was made about the expanded collaboration between Epic and Microsoft for artificial intelligence in healthcare. In that written statement, Eric Boyd, Corporate Vice President – AI Platform at Microsoft had this to say:
“Today, we are announcing the expansion of our strategic initiative to bring AI to healthcare at scale, integrating conversational, ambient and generative AI technologies across the Epic electronic health record (EHR) ecosystem. Intended to speed development of solutions for healthcare’s most critical needs, the initiative will expand secure access to AI-powered clinical insights and administrative tools within a wide range of Epic modules to enhance patient care, increase operational efficiency, improve healthcare experiences, and support the financial integrity of health systems globally.”
Using its Azure OpenAI Service and Nuance DAX Express solutions, Microsoft will be working to:
- Enhance clinician productivity with note summarization
- Enchancing clinician productivity with embedded ambient clinical documentatino
- Driving administrative efficiencies through reduction in manual, labor intesive process
- Advancing medicin for better patient outcomes
The nature of the expanded partnership was mentioned in Epic CEO Judy Faulkner’s opening keynote, but during their on stage one-on-one conversation, neither Satya nor Rana took the opportunity to showcase the announcement. This honestly made their conversation better. The two men explored the topic of AI without turning their time together into a promo.
How Transformative will Generative AI Be?
One short exchange between Satya and Rana was truly fascinating.
In his opening, Rana shared the story of how he was playing with ChatGPT over the holidays and was immediately struck by the possibilities of the technology. He spoke about having a “gut punch” moment – similar to how he felt when he first got his hands on a SmartPhone. Rana then presented the following slide where he stated that generative AI would be as transformative and paradigm-shifting as personal computers, GPS, the Internet, and a number of other technologies.
While in conversation with Rana, Satya had a different take on generative AI. He likened generative AI to relational databases and the graphical user interface. While both these advancements were transformative in their own right, I do not believe anyone would put GUIs in the same world-changing category as GPS or the Internet.
What I gleaned from this brief exchange is that Satya sees generative AI as a powerful tool that will complement other technologies but will ultimately fade into the background (how many of us actually think about the relational database that underpins a solution?). This is in contrast to Rana who believes generative AI as a catalyst for completely new ways of doing things.
I agree with both gentlemen. I feel that generative AI will be transformative, allowing us to do things we never would have thought possible, BUT it will one day just be part of the underlying technology stack and will not occupy any more thoughtspace than GUIs do today.
It will be interesting to look back 5 years from now and gauge how transformative generative AI ended up being.
