Epic to Launch Disease Outbreak Alerts
EHR vendor Epic is launching a new disease outbreak alerting feature. The move signals the company's continued expansion into adjacent analytics and population health workflows, increasing its functional scope within client health systems.
- The new "Health Alerts" feature is powered by Epic's Cosmos database, which contains anonymized records from over 300 million patients across 1,900 hospitals and more than 42,000 clinics. - Scheduled to launch in the spring of 2026, the tool will flag when conditions such as measles or salmonella surpass expected levels, with data provided down to the county level. - This system expands on Epic's existing free Communicable Diseases Data Tracker, a public tool that previously helped detect a nationwide outbreak of hand, foot, and mouth disease in the fall of 2025. - The new alerts for external, community-wide outbreaks complement Epic's long-standing "Bugsy" module, which is designed for internal infection surveillance and control within a specific hospital or health system. - This initiative is part of a broader strategy that leverages other Epic modules like Healthy Planet, which focuses on population health management by integrating clinical and claims data to risk-stratify patients. - According to Caleb Cox, Epic's head of research, the objective is to provide health systems and public health partners with data for more effective preparation, coordination, and response to outbreaks.
