There’s plenty of excitement around how AI might influence the future of healthcare, but Oracle Health’s newly announced Electronic Health Record (EHR) features some impressive AI functionalities that bring this vision to life.
“This isn’t a refurbished Cerner EHR,” explains Seema Verma, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Oracle Health and Life Sciences. “It’s a dynamic, evolving system of intelligence that spurs action to ensure better patient outcomes.”
While there are still plenty of unknowns around the new EHR, with Oracle keeping things under wraps until its early adopter program begins in mid-2025, here are a few things we do know—and how they might impact your organization.
What’s Coming in Oracle Health’s New EHR
Built using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), this new EHR is touted to be a next-generation technology that simplifies and automates processes while integrating seamlessly with other Oracle Health (formerly known as Cerner) solutions. It won’t be available for hospitals and health systems right away, but here are a few features of the EHR you can expect to see in 2025 and beyond:
1) Improved User Interface
AI tends to grab headlines, but one of the biggest—and most important—changes to Oracle’s new EHR is the updated user interface (UI). With a more intuitive, user-friendly design, the improved UI will include both AI and voice-enabled features like voice-driven navigation and multimodal search designed to streamline clinician workflows, reduce time spent on the platform, and facilitate ease of use.
2) AI-Powered Functionality
In addition to an updated UI, the new Oracle Health EHR is designed to leverage AI capabilities to automate processes and improve provider workflows, enabling clinicians to access patient information more easily—including the introduction of AI-powered summaries to speed up chart review—so they can spend more time delivering quality patient care.
3) Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent
Released in June 2024 as a standalone feature available in Millennium, the new EHR integrates the newly updated Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent as a key feature for hospitals and health systems. Formerly known as the Clinical Digital Assistant, this automated technology is designed to increase clinician productivity by reducing time spent on navigation and documentation.
4) New Patient Portal & Administration Platform
Another cloud-based service that will integrate with the reimagined EHR is the new Oracle Health Patient Portal, which will collect and maintain patients’ entire medical history—allowing them access and control over their own data—while helping them connect with providers, pay their bills, schedule appointments, and more.
“Patients don’t care what EHR their doctors use,” Verma adds. “We see the future portal as a comprehensive patient engagement tool—one that helps them understand their health, their care plans, test results, and gives them control over their healthcare experience.”
Adding to this, Oracle Health’s Patient Administration platform is another development that will integrate directly with the new EHR. Utilizing AI-powered automation and self-service capabilities, the cloud-based solution promises to drive productivity and improve the patient experience by providing staff with guided workflows and personalized recommendations—and allowing patients to manage their own scheduling and registration tasks.
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What Isn’t Changing with Oracle Health’s New EHR
While there are a lot of interesting features to explore with this new EHR, it’s important to note that these changes will not be disruptive to current Oracle Health clients.
As of this writing, features like the Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent and Oracle Health Data Intelligence will remain available as standalone options that work with any EHR. There will also be no data conversion necessary when moving to the new UI, and it shouldn’t require organizations to purchase additional hardware or technologies.
Implications for Healthcare Organizations
So, what does the announcement of a new Oracle Health EHR mean for you and your organization? Right now, no action is needed for current Oracle Health customers. Oracle has announced that this new EHR will cause minimal disruption, so it will not impact existing Millennium customers, nor will it impact any planned optimization projects. The new EHR will utilize Millennium’s database tables, so any work that is done to clean up the data and/or optimize the current build will not be lost in the transition.
If you’re interested in transitioning to the new EHR, Oracle has already begun work to move clients to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The new EHR will likely require some initial setup and outside support, but we’re still learning what this process will look like. However, we do know that the new EHR will have the ability to interface with other EHRs from the OCI platform. It will also integrate features included in recent Millennium releases—like Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent—in the updated UI.
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Choosing the Right EHR for You
After acquiring Cerner in 2022, the recent announcement of Oracle Health’s new EHR is a significant update for healthcare organizations looking to stay on top of emerging technologies. There are many benefits of an EHR system, like those offered by Oracle Health, Epic, or Meditech, but it’s important to choose the right system for your organization.
If you’re interested in learning more about the new Oracle Health EHR, or if you’re interested in migrating to a different EHR, contact one of our experts today to get started.