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by Judith Faulkner ’65, CEO and founder of Epic

As a math major at Dickinson, I was fortunate, with the help of my math professors, to be accepted for a summer research job at the University of Rochester sponsored by the National Science Foundation. But the job needed a programmer, and at that time I had never seen a computer. It was the 1960s, and Dickinson didn’t have any. Yet.

When I explained that I knew nothing about programming, the people at Rochester gave me a FORTRAN book and a week of access to the computer. By the end of the summer, the principal investigator had published a couple of papers, and I went on to complete my B.S. and go to graduate school in computer science. After grad school, I, with the help of a few others, started Epic, which most people know as the company that produces MyChart, their health care provider’s portal.

Since then, there have been many significant advances in IT, including PCs, graphical user interface, smartphones and now generative artificial intelligence (AI).

You are all familiar with AI. If you go to a hotel and wait for one of the elevators to come to your floor, that’s algorithmic AI (meaning someone has programmed the specific rules or algorithm) figuring out which elevator it should be.

Most recently, we embedded generative AI—the technology behind ChatGPT—into our health care applications. Generative AI is very clever. It looks at gazillions of similar situations and figures out what to say or do next. For example, to help physicians be efficient, generative AI drafts responses to patients’ MyChart messages for the clinician to review and edit as needed. Feedback has been that the patients and clinicians really like the AI-created replies because they often are friendlier than the busy clinician’s responses.

In the exam room, as the patient and clinician discuss the patient’s care, AI can—with patient approval—listen and create a draft note for the clinician’s documentation. This allows the clinician to concentrate on communicating with the patient and saves a lot of time.

With many new use cases under development, AI will help make everything from scheduling appointments to office workflows more efficient. Even more exciting is how AI can help us all stay healthier—for example, by showing you and your clinician the results of the medications thousands of patients who are similar to you have taken, so you can make the best choice.

Epic turned 45 years old in March, and we helped health care move from paper charts—often barely legible, dense and easily misplaced—to electronic health records. In addition, now health systems can start using the data in these records to solve the mysteries of disease and help people stay healthier.

It’s exciting new technology, and there is a lot more to come. Even as things change, I’m grateful for the mathematics foundation I received at Dickinson. It helped define who I am, and I think it’s the best major there is.

Judith Faulkner ’65 was named one of the “most powerful women in healthcare” by Forbes. She founded Epic, a privately owned health care software company and the leading medical-records software company in the U.S., in 1979. She and her family established the Roots & Wings Foundation to provide vital support to low-income children and families at pivotal times.

Read more from the spring 2024 issue of Dickinson Magazine.

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Published June 6, 2024