Healthcare AI+Innovation | ER Doc@TPMG | Offcall & MDCalc Founder (views are my own, not employers')
You don’t have to log in to the workstation — because your phone 𝗜𝗦 the workstation. That’s the headline that knocked me sideways at this year’s UGM. Epic is famously tight-lipped and private, but one of the things they do really well is listen, and understand healthcare's problems. I’ll often think "I wish Epic did X" — and a year later, they've added it. So UGM usually feels like déjà vu: things I’ve wanted, and now they're delivering. Useful, but not always surprising to me. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦. Demo’d inside Epic’s “Hospital Room of the Future,” the concept is so simple it feels obvious in hindsight (which is a sign of great innovation): 1️⃣ Take your Android phone (they said Apple support is in the works). 2️⃣ Plug it into a monitor with a keyboard and mouse — but no computer. 3️⃣ Full Epic Hyperspace appears on the monitor. You’re logged in. It’s your exact session. It's not running on the cloud. The phone isn’t just a phone. It’s THE workstation. No generic logins. No typing passwords with sweaty gloves. No hijacking someone else’s session. You plug in, you chart, you unplug, you go. This is what real innovation looks like: not just shiny tech, but reimagined workflows. And that’s rare for companies this big. It’s built for nursing right now. But I want it for the ER, too. (If anyone knows the tech behind this, I'd love to hear details)
But… it’s still running Hyperspace. Something has to give. Almost 20 years in the space and there are far superior EHRs out there. It’s a distribution thing and I get it, but just frustrating. Like I always say, Judy’s way or the highway. That cult will have to fade at some point.
Graham, a bioengineer, asked whether this feature could work without connectivity — for example, in rural areas. Thoughts?
I saw this there too. What are the keyboard and mouse plugged into?
What you’re seeing is Epic Hyperspace on Citrix Workspace running on Samsung DeX then wrapped in a tortilla and smothered in queso, then wrapped in another tortilla and baked to perfection, and topped with pico de gallo salsa and packaged in a collectible container, Graham Walker, MD.
It’s likely running a screen sharing session with another machine running the actual client headless elsewhere. This is not new technology (although the SSO piece might be given the way you’ve described it) and will most likely require an upgrade for the hosting institution. A typical ploy to get you to upgrade. I would submit that this isn’t very practical given that if you have a keyboard and mouse and monitor to plug in your phone, then you likely have a computer too, making the phone irrelevant.
Adding biometrics as an extra security layer would be ideal.
Epic and listening don’t belong in the same sentence! One of the reasons I retired.
Graham Walker, MD I'd love to get you connected with the people behind the tech. :)
So much potential. Interested to learn when the iOS version will be released?
📘Precision Medicine: AI and the Science of Personalized Healthcare Advisor | Board Member | Executive | Author
1moGraham, that’s an interesting demo, but plugging a phone into a monitor and keyboard is BlackBerry/PlayBook-era tech. The real leap is casting cloud-persistent sessions that follow you wirelessly across devices—less hardware friction, more workflow freedom. And that’s available already in other tech domains; a quick Google search reveals no less than eight in common use everyday. This is where Epic appears to be more obstacle than enabler of efficient, effective, personalized healthcare.