While AI may not replace the EHR anytime soon, it will “fundamentally change” it, potentially relieving clinicians of the need to type on a keyboard, CIOs told Becker’s.
With the rise of ambient AI that documents and processes information about patient encounters, along with voice activation technology and in-room smart cameras, health system IT leaders are starting to envision a time when the modern medical visit setup — a provider typing while looking at a screen and often not at the patient — fades into antiquity.
“I can see the day where physicians, nurses, and other clinicians are freed from the ball and chain that is the mouse and keyboard,” said Dave Ingham, DO, chief digital and information officer of Minneapolis-based Allina Health. “They are not dependent on the desktop experience that is, at best, distracting from real patient care and, at worst, mostly divorced from it.”
In this scenario, he said, “AI is both documenting and processing information, and serving up intuitively the information a clinician needs.” He added that while this won’t happen overnight, “it’s real and coming.”
Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine is already working on the EHR of the future, building an outpatient clinic — without keyboards.
“I want it all to be voice-activated,” said Mitchell Schnall, MD, PhD, senior vice president for data and technology solutions at Penn Medicine. “I want all the documentation to be ambient.”
The health system is designing the ambulatory clinic, set to open in two years, alongside Epic.
Dr. Schnall said he envisions the computer monitor eventually going away as well, being replaced by screens mounted on the walls, where clinicians can review images as virtual providers can join the conversation. How quickly will all this happen? In five years, the industry will have “pretty good clarity,” he said.
Then the “multimillion-dollar question,” as Dr. Schnall put it, becomes: Who controls the orchestration? One of the big EHR vendors? An up-and-comer in health tech?
Either way, he added, “you still need a place to put the data. You still need a place for that order to go to get transacted. You still need a place for that code to go to get a bill sent out.”
The EHR, thus, won’t go away; it will become merely “invisible,” said Laura Fultz, chief digital information officer of Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare.
“What’s next is AI sitting between the care team and the EHR — handling the documentation, retrieval of records, predictive analytics, coordination of workflows,” she said. “That shift allows for clinicians to focus on human interactions while the AI and EHR handle the complexities behind the scenes.”
AI will not supplant the EHR — at least in the next three to five years — but will “quietly shift it into the background,” said Chero Goswami, chief information and digital officer of Renton, Wash.-based Providence. EHR platforms are, after all, the “system of record, transaction engine, workflow backbone, compliance artifact, and much more.”
“For clinicians, the change is less about learning new tools and more about trusting AI to handle documentation, surface insights, and redefine their role from data entry to decision stewardship,” he said. “For patients, care will feel more continuous and coordinated, but it will require building confidence in systems that act proactively on their behalf.”
Clinicians will interact with AI copilots and agents, Mr. Goswami predicted.
The EHR — as the “legal medical record” — will remain essential for the foreseeable future, said Amy Trainor, BSN, RN, vice president and CIO of New Orleans-based Ochsner Health.
“What is exciting is how AI can enhance the way clinicians interact with it,” she said. “AI has the potential to take on much of the time-consuming administrative work, while surfacing and summarizing the information that matters most. We are already seeing the benefits of this today.”
As AI evolves, it will also raise patient expectations — and health system leaders will have to step up to meet them, Ms. Trainor said.
“AI will not make the EHR obsolete, but it will fundamentally change how we interact with it,” said Crystal Broj, chief digital transformation officer of Charleston, S.C.-based MUSC Health. “The EHR will evolve rather than disappear. It will become less of a system that clinicians work ‘in’ and more of an intelligent platform that works alongside them.”
The traditional, screen-heavy experience will fade, with big changes in store for interoperability and data usability as well. “As AI advances, there will be greater pressure on EHRs to open up data in more seamless ways so health systems can analyze trends, act in real time, and drive more proactive care,” Ms. Broj said.
As advanced technologies like computer vision and even robotics also enter this equation, the need for an EHR will only intensify, argued Deepesh Chandra, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer of New York City-based Montefiore Health System.
“Healthcare delivery still requires a system that can manage longitudinal patient data, enforce clinical workflows, embed evidence-based guidelines, ensure safety guardrails, and maintain accountability with a licensed clinician firmly in control of care decisions,” he said. “AI doesn’t replace that foundation — it depends on it.”
Sha Edathumparampil, chief digital and information officer of Coral Gables-based Baptist Health South Florida, labels the current EHR user experience “lowest common denominator” — built for everyone and thus too expensive and overly complicated.
“EHR makers are already investing heavily in improving this, and I think we’re approaching an inflection point where the EHR becomes truly personalized to the actor in front of it,” he said. “That should dramatically reduce manual effort and let every user — clinician, patient or operator — accomplish what they need with far less friction.”
AI will become that new interface, with the EHR remaining the repository for encounter and clinical data, said Eric Smith, senior vice president and chief digital officer of Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System. AI will ingest the data and disseminate it to providers and patients.
“AI will understand how to support clinicians in presenting complex clinical information to patients, coupled with steps they can take to help manage their care,” Mr. Smith said. “At the same time, it will provide comprehensive medical history details for clinical teams, integrating insights from aggregated data from multiple populations, all while summarizing to help providers make decisions quickly.”
As EHRs evolve into intelligent platforms with predictive, generative and agentic AI integrated into clinical and operational workflows, health systems will need strong governance and clear human oversight, said Sunil Dadlani, executive vice president and chief information and digital transformation officer at Morristown, N.J.-based Atlantic Health.
“As AI becomes more deeply embedded in workflows, risk management will become just as important as innovation,” he said. “Health systems will need to manage safety, accuracy, accountability, bias, and trust across every layer of AI adoption.”
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