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Oracle has unveiled a new version of its electronic health record offering, divorcing it from the assets the company acquired through its purchase of Cerner three years ago.
Electronic health records (EHR) are essentially patients’ medical notes in digital form, a place where doctors and other healthcare professionals can access details on their interactions with patients. This includes notes from their consultations, test results, recent scans, prescriptions or referrals made to other medical specialities.
In keeping with other recent updates to Oracle’s health software, the company is adding in more artificial intelligence throughout the EHR, including agentic AI that will “help streamline decision-making [and] automate routine tasks”, according to Oracle.
The application will use AI to adapt to the way individual clinicians use it – for example, by remembering doctors’ preferred workflows or the groups of tests that users regularly order. It can also create drafts of clinical correspondence.
Doctors will also be able to access custom AI-generated summaries of the patients they are due to see in clinic that day. Oracle said this will be adapted to the type of doctor viewing the notes – a GP or speciality doctor, for example – as well as where the patient is being seen.
Oracle is also pitching the voice navigation capabilities of the updated EHR, noting that healthcare users can use voice to request particular information about patients as well as check drug interactions or clinical guidelines.
How useful this will be in practice remains to be seen. However, doctors, particularly those in acute medicine, spend most of their time in areas where they can be overheard by other patients and their relatives, making voice navigation something of a privacy hazard.
The new version of Oracle’s EHR will also integrate information from the company’s other health vertical products – including Oracle Health Seamless Exchange and Oracle Health Data Intelligence – as well as QHINs.
QHINs are qualified health information networks, or organisations that can facilitate healthcare information sharing under a US government framework called TEFCA. Integration with Oracle’s Health Life Sciences products will be available in future, allowing the EHR to flag when patients are eligible to take part in clinical trials.
Oracle made its biggest move into the EHR space in 2022, when it bought EHR provider Cerner for around $28 billion. However, Oracle’s latest EHR is not using Cerner technologies, and Cerner-based versions of the EHR won’t be compatible with the next-gen system, CNBC reported.
Oracle is thought to have around one fifth of the EHR market in the US, behind Epic, which has around two fifths.
