Building Epic: Judy Faulkner on Leadership

Why It Matters

Epic’s customer‑centric, privately held model accelerates interoperable digital health solutions, directly improving patient safety and enabling the NHS to adopt advanced AI tools without the pressures of public market shareholders.

Key Takeaways

• Epic began in a basement, now powers 10% of NHS trusts.
• Customer focus drives product decisions, not shareholder pressure.
• Immersion trips let developers observe workflows and improve usability.
• AI tools aim to reduce note‑taking and suggest diagnoses.
• Preventive care features like Care Companion empower patient self‑management.

Summary

In a candid Digital Health Unplugged interview, Epic Systems founder and CEO Judy Faulkner recounts how a basement‑startup in 1979 grew into one of the United States’ largest private health‑IT firms, now serving roughly ten percent of acute NHS trusts. She traces her path from a math‑obsessed student to a pioneering programmer, highlighting the university assignment that birthed the first longitudinal patient‑record system and the deliberate steps—legal, financial, and institutional—required to launch Epic as a privately held, founder‑led company. Faulkner emphasizes that Epic’s strategic compass points squarely at the customer, not shareholders. Employees are asked to prioritize clinicians’ needs, and product roadmaps emerge from “immersion trips” where developers live on‑site for months, observing real workflows—from pharmacy operations to OR hand‑washing routines—to design intuitive solutions. This customer‑first ethos fuels innovations such as real‑time medication alerts that prevented 170 million unsafe orders last year and a robust interoperability framework built after a tragic patient death due to missing records. Specific examples illustrate the company’s impact: the Cosmos data lake now aggregates 300 million de‑identified patient records to surface diagnostic suggestions, while AI‑driven note‑taking listens to clinician‑patient conversations and drafts documentation. Faulkner also describes patient‑facing tools like MyChart’s Care Companion, which provides preventive‑care checklists and education, aiming to shift care from reactive treatment to proactive health management. The interview underscores how Epic’s private structure enables long‑term, mission‑driven investment in technology that can scale across public systems like the NHS. By aligning product development with clinician workflow and leveraging AI for safety and efficiency, Epic positions itself as a catalyst for a more interoperable, data‑rich, and preventive health ecosystem.

Original Description

In this episode of Digital Health Unplugged, Judy Faulkner, founder and chief executive of Epic Systems, shares her journey from maths puzzles and early programming to building one of the world’s most widely-adopted electronic patient record (EPR) systems.

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