🥊 Epic vs. Everyone

Team Huddle

I have been busy working on RN Forward’s Nurse Company Database that is now LIVE!

In version 1, check out company profiles and the latest news of scalable businesses founded by fellow nurses! I am always keen on hearing about more scalable nurse-founded companies, whether they’re early stage startups or companies that have exited. Email me companies you know of! I’m always looking to add more to the database.

In version 2, look forward to 1) more robust company profile metrics, 2) more streamlined filtering experience, 3) articles breaking down the significant metrics being tracked, and 4) market maps.

Until then, Epic’s User Group Meeting 2025 Conference announcement of new AI features has been the talk of the town. So of course, I had to give my nursing POV on the announcement to. Starting off with …

News Nurses Need to Know

1. AI Scribe Startups are shakin’ in their boots at Epic’s Native AI Scribe announcement.

   • Details: The days where visit summaries completed by AI scribes as a “total product” are over. EHR behemoth, Epic, announced their AI solutions (including an AI scribe) this week at UGM. To compete against 128 other AI scribes, Doximity’s free AI scribe, and big 🐶, Epic, current AI Scribe startups gotta do more to stand out. Considering they have collectively raised over $1B+ in venture capital and are valued as unicorns, the race to differentiate and distribute is on. Abridge makes its first move at differentiating by taking a stab at real time prior authorization at the point of conversation. Ambience just released their ambient co-pilot Chart Chat feature. OpenEvidence, traditionally a medical information platform, threw their gauntlet in the race with the launch of “Visits” (a free real-time clinician assistant built for the patient encounter) Wednesday night too.

   • Why it matters: My personal take is that these companies have not built for nursing workflows yet because we are not considered revenue drivers to CFOs. However, to ignore building ambient scribes for nursing workflows would be gross negligence considering we do a large portion of data collection and care coordination (at least in inpatient world). Moreover, 1/3 of nurses cite EHRs as a contributor to burnout. The writing is on the wall: Nurses deserve AI scribes that work for them too.
     
     Ambience, Abridge, and Suki recently released job postings for nursing roles so perhaps in the near future, we’ll start seeing more nursing products roll out. Abridge, notably, completed their pilot with Mayo Clinic with positive learnings while other companies continue to lag behind. I have heard nary a peep from any other top scribe companies. When I do, we can dissect the product together and see if they built a quality product with nurses on the team or if they’re just doing the bare minimum to appease their investors resulting in a crap product for us nurses.

     

2. Epic emphasized a “strong focus on Nursing Support” during their conference. The tangible offerings? Peanuts lol. 🥜

   • Details: 3 features affecting nurses announced are
     1) AI wound measurement - Clinicians can take a photo of a wound using their mobile device, and AI will auto-calculate the wound's size
     2) Dual sign off for high risk meds - A virtual nurse will be able to confirm that the dosing of a high-risk medication is correct via video chat, eliminating the need for an in-person touchpoint

     3) “Teamwork” - a new staff scheduling application for physicians and nurses thats coming soon. No specific details on this though.

   • Why it matters: Re: 1) wound measurement, yay i guess??? There is already technology out there that does this (my first interaction with it being over 5 years ago when working at GW Hospital in DC) so I frankly was expecting more? The real problem is that nurses don't always grade wounds the same way. No matter how much training you do or how many standards you set, there's still going to be variation between what one nurse sees and what another nurse sees. Say one nurse charts a wound as Stage 4, but another nurse looks at the same wound and thinks it's Stage 3. Doesn't matter what the second nurse thinks. Once that Stage 4 label is in the system, it stays. The worst classification always wins, even when the wound actually qualifies as something less severe. Consequently, hospitals get penalized for having severe hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs). They also face legal liability. When you consider that pressure injuries are the second most common reason hospitals get sued, you'd think Epic would offer more than the basic, surface-level tools …. 😗
     
     Re: 2) virtual dual sign off for high risk meds. Honestly, no notes. During the pandemic, one of the biggest workflow bottlenecks was having to find someone to sign off on my Versed (sedative) boluses that we had to give frequently for ventilator de-synchrony. Curious how long it takes to connect to a virtual nurse though? If it takes longer than me shouting down the hallway for someone to come sign-off, you’ve lost me.
     
     Re: 3) “Teamwork” - Since there’s nothing specific included in this announcement other than the software is in the works, i’ll hold my comments for now. But since nurse founded startups like M7 build in this space, I’ll be interested to see how they respond to this announcement.

3. Emmie, Art, Penny, and Cosmos AI.

   

   • Details: To compartmentalize over 160+ projects epic is working on, the highlighted features were all given a name. Here’s a breakdown of what they each do and how it affects everyday nurses.
     
     Emmie - a patient facing assistant built into MyChart that helps them with basic healthcare tasks. Emmie can do simple tasks like answer questions about lab results, propose appointment times and suggest relevant screenings that patients can discuss with their doctor. Emmie will significantly reduce the volume of routine patient calls and messages. Instead of nurses explaining basic lab results or helping patients schedule follow-up appointments, Emmie handles these interactions automatically. This frees up care providers to focus on more complex patient care needs and critical clinical tasks rather than spending time on administrative questions.
     
     Art - Art is the clinician co-pilot that can anticipate information doctors might need, pull up information like blood pressure trends, update patient family history, place orders, and draft clinical notes. Art for Clinicians is Epic's AI scribe solution that helps with clinical documentation. Art is not build to interface with nursing workflows unless you’re an APP.
     
     Penny - Penny is a generative AI tool for revenue cycle management that helps with coding and denial appeals. It affects primarily billing and coding staff so I don’t expect nurses to interact with it much since we’re not a billable service *eye twitch*.
     
     Cosmos - Epic combined Cosmos with generative AI to create CoMET: a family of models that use de-identified, longitudinal health records from 118 million patients and 151 billion medical events to simulate patient health timelines. The models could be used to predict a timeline of a patient's potential medical events, like whether they're a readmission risk or could eventually experience a heart attack.
     
     Cosmos AI will transform how nurses approach care navigation and patient monitoring. By predicting which patients are at risk for complications, readmissions, or specific health events, providers can proactively intervene and adjust care plans. This means nurses can prioritize their attention on the highest-risk patients and implement preventive measures before problems occur, ultimately improving patient outcomes.
     
     Lots of questions now if this data will be exclusive to Epic or if external start-ups can access this data. I will be 0% surprised if sharing the data comes at a high cost. 💸

Funding Announcements

💸 = Hiring potential. Follow these companies closely to see Nurse-qualified positions posted. Remember: Just because some positions don’t say “Nurse”, doesn’t mean you aren’t qualified!

• Equip, a virtual eating disorder platform, raised $46.6M.

• AI-driven RCM company, Stedi, raised $70M Series B to automate clearinghouse workflows.

• Citizen Health, an AI advocate for patients with rare diseases, raised $30M.

• Arintra, an AI coding platform for providers, raised $21M Series A.

• Virtual dementia care company, Isaac Health, raised $10.5M.

• Ambience, ambient AI platform for documentation, coding and CDI, announced a $243M Series C.

• Arbital Health, a VBC contracting platform, raised $31M.

• C8 Health, a AI powered best practices implementation platform, raised a $12M Series A.

Other Notable Reads and Podcasts

✍️ On The Blog

Forward Nursing: Learning Opportunities 🏃🏻‍♀️

Round-up of learning and career development opportunities i’ve come across that can help nurse innovators like YOU! (Not sponsored or affiliated with RN Forward.)

• NurseHack4Health Applications are open!

  • TBH: The biggest global nursing hackathon event is taking applications for participants. Past winners include x, y, z. There are 3 tracks you can apply for: Track 1: Health Systems & Nursing Organizations (From High-Resource Countries) Health Systems & Nursing Organizations (From Low to Mid-Resource Countries) and Nurse-Founded Startups (US-only). Past iterations did not allow independent nurse start ups (they required you to be attached to a health system) so its nice to see track 3 be an option. For more information, there are 2 info sessions in August and September to answer your potential questions.

  • When: Nov. 19, 2025

  • Where: Virtual

  • Application Due: Sept. 30, 2025

  • Cost: Free

  • Prize: Up to $385k in Grant funding

  • Apply here

• Nurse Capital: Meet the Limited Partners (LPs) (Webinar)

  • TBH: Beth and Marla are the dynamite nurses behind the first ever, nurse-led venture capital firm. They invest only in nurse-led startups. Check out this webinar to understand venture capital, the roles of LPs, the Nurse Capital journey, and more.

  • When: Sept 16 + Sept. 24, 2025 sessions.

  • Where: Virtual

  • Cost: Free

  • Sign up here