Epic Systems, a health care software company based in Verona, Wisconsin, held a virtual panel Sept. 17 to discuss their development of Cosmos, an online dataset, as well as their future research.
The panel was part of The Capital Times Idea Fest, an annual weekly event hosted by the Madison newspaper since 2017 featuring seminars and interviews with politicians, journalists and other experts. Epic’s Vice President of Clinical Informatics Jackie Gerhart and Epic Research Lead Caleb Cox led the panel.
Epic primarily focuses on health care software development and got their start with Electronic Health Records (EHRs). They now provide software for many major hospitals in the United States and around the world. MyChart, the Epic creation used by hundreds of millions of practitioners and patients to centralize medical records and data online, is one of the company’s most popular and widespread online offerings.
Through the development of much of the software made to ease the health care process and surround the patient with information, Epic sought to use the data to help inform other patients through Cosmos and Epic Research, Gerhart said.
Cosmos is an online dataset which Epic EHR customers can opt into to contribute de-identifying data allowing Epic to provide specialized care to one patient with a similar diagnosis to another patient in the dataset. Gerhart asserted that Cosmos would allow clinicians to solve “medical mysteries” and provide the best care for patients quickly by using the Cosmos data.
Best Care Choices and Look-Alikes are two pieces of software Epic has developed through Cosmos to allow physicians to make decisions based on similar experiences and connect to other physicians in the Cosmos community about rare conditions.
Epic Research builds off of Cosmos, using the data to publish studies on a variety of health studies that may not have been publicly available.
“Quick, representative and available were the keys,” Gerhart said during the panel about the development of Epic Research. Once COVID-19 broke, Epic Research took its shape in response.
One of the first studies Gerhart detailed during COVID-19 was the usage of ventilators. The company took clinical data, including how long patients were on ventilators and the severity of their illness, to figure out how to properly locate the limited amounts of ventilators.
Epic researchers were able to discover that people could achieve lower oxygen saturations without needing to be on a ventilator and that they could use alternative care methods — thus, using the ventilators in a more intelligent way, according to Gerhart.
The study triggered more research into COVID-19 but also into using the data to research a broad range of health issues. Cox described partnerships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and being able to use their combined data to answer questions about Mpox and even strep throat, publishing the information in a matter of weeks.
Throughout the panel, Gerhart and Cox delved into other studies Epic has done, including many of today’s pressing health issues such as fentanyl overdoses, the efficacy of telehealth visits and GLP-1s such as Ozempic. They said they aim to make this information and data easily available and understandable for everyday patients.
