Epic's Deep Space auditorium during UGM 2024. Courtesy: Epic Systems In an underground auditorium packed with thousands of health-care executives this week, Epic Systems CEO Judy Faulkner stepped on stage to deliver a keynote dressed like a swan, feathers and all. Even by the tech industry's more casual standards (take Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's trademark leather jacket, for instance), Faulkner's costume may have puzzled some first-time attendees.
But for many health-care industry veterans and Epic employees, it was business as usual— a sign that Epic's annual Users Group Meeting was officially underway. And one theme stood out during the health-care company's event on Tuesday: How new artificial intelligence features can help doctors and patients. Epic is a health-care software giant whose technology is used in thousands of U.
S. hospitals and clinics. The company houses medical records for more than 280 million individuals in the U.
S., though patients often have data stored across multiple vendors. Wizards and animals Each year, thousands of people descend on Epic's headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin to hear about its latest products and initiatives.
UGM is one of the company's largest annual on-campus events, and CNBC attended the festivities on Tuesday. Epic's 1,670-acre campus is sprinkled with farm animals, statues of wizards and buildings themed like "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz." Fittingly, this year's conference is "storytime" themed, and Faulkner and o.