How should Epic position Agent Factory and its AI platform against third-party healthcare AI vendors?

Introduction

At its 2026 user group meeting, Epic made AI agents the centre of its strategy. It previewed Agent Factory, a no-code platform for health systems to build, run and monitor AI agents, starting with around 120 existing AI capabilities and with general availability expected in 2027. Epic's named assistants (Art for clinicians, Emmie for patients and Penny for revenue cycle) and its models built on Cosmos data are meant to run inside the EHR. Meanwhile, startups such as Abridge, large players such as Microsoft (Dragon Copilot) and many niche AI vendors sell directly to health systems. The prompt asks how Epic should position Agent Factory and its AI platform against third-party AI vendors. This is hard because Epic is both a platform others build on and a competitor to those builders.

Step 1

Clarify the Strategic Goals (3-4 minutes)

• Is the goal to maximise Epic-built AI usage, or to make Epic the platform where all healthcare AI runs?

• Hypothetical answer: Make Epic the trusted platform for healthcare AI, with Epic-built capabilities as the default.

• Time horizon?

• Hypothetical answer: Three years, through Agent Factory general availability.

• How does Epic make money from AI?

• Hypothetical answer: Some features included in licences; others priced separately. Epic aims to keep AI affordable for customers.

• Constraints?

• Hypothetical answer: Patient safety, privacy, FDA rules for clinical decision software, and customer trust.

Strategic goal: Make Agent Factory the standard way health systems deploy AI agents in clinical and operational workflows, by combining Epic's data access and workflow integration with safety, governance and openness to proven partners.