The CEO of Epic Systems, one of the leading providers ofelectronic health software, laid out the company's goals for thefuture during the company’s annual users group meeting this week.

Judy Faulkner’s vision for the future of the company — andhealth care records in general — includes improving the resourcesavailable to providers, expanding the data included in a patient’srecord, integrating more closely with benefits providers, andincreasing the patient’s involvement in care.

In 2018, the company plans to implement cognitive computing inthe software portal used by providers to help identify trends andpatterns that could signal drug-abuse risk or predict chronicconditions such as diabetes. It will also add integration withbenefit provider Surescripts to give physicians greatertransparency into the patient’s expected medical costs.

“By putting control in the hands of the patients to decide wheretheir data goes, by creating a helpful user interface for theclinician to see the C-CDA [consolidated-clinical documentarchitecture] health information of the patient, and by sending theclinician’s note back to the Epic health system in an easy way forthe clinician using Epic to find and review, we have improvedcontinuity of care for the patient,” Faulkner told Healthcare Informatics via email.

As part of a shift toward a “comprehensive health record,” thecompany is also looking to track data such as diet, sleep andsocial factors in its MyChart patient record system, whichcurrently serves 68.2 million patients in health networks acrossthe country. The company is exploring ways to make these recordsmore easily available among providers and giving more control over the information to patients.More than 400 health care businesses using the Epic system havealready agreed to the more open exchange of data.