Skip to content

What Epic’s Latest Moves Mean for Health Tech Products

In our last post, we looked at what Epic Connectors mean for Revenue Cycle products. But Connectors are only one piece of the larger picture based on what everything Epic seems to have done in 2026. There seem to be two things being done by Epic at the same time
  1. It is standardizing the pipe, the open channels that data and actions flow through.
  2. It is absorbing the generic, the routine work it can now do itself.
If you sell into Epic hospitals, both of these affect you. What do you bring that Epic can’t make itself?

The two pieces

1. Standardizing the pipe Epic is replacing closed, custom channels with open standards that it runs at scale. MCP for Connectors. DICOMweb and FHIR for images. Direct price feeds from pharmacies. Getting into Epic becomes easier. But the channel belongs to Epic, so your product shows up inside Epic’s workflow, not as a separate place people go to. 2. Absorbing the generic Epic is building routine work into its own AI agents: Art for clinicians, Penny for revenue cycle and Emmie for patients. Hospitals can also build their own agents in Agent Factory. Work that looks the same in every hospital, like drafting an appeal letter or answering a scheduling question, becomes an Epic feature.

Four buckets

Together, these two moves sort products into four buckets.
Bucket What happens Typical products
Absorbed Epic does it natively. The standalone product loses its reason to exist. Generic AI point tools
Channelled The product survives but is reached through Epic. Its interface fades, and the value moves to the answer it gives. Specialist products with unique data or expertise
Squeezed The middle layer thins as Epic owns the pipe. Middleware, integration and automation shops; products whose value is a portal
Empowered A sector gets reach or demand it didn’t have before. Suppliers of things Epic can’t make; builders of the new pipes

Epic’s four big moves of 2026, at a glance

Three of the four moves standardize a pipe. One absorbs. Find your product in the table. “(our view)” is our understanding of the industry. Not anything reported.
Move Absorbed Channelled Squeezed Empowered
Connectors: Announced Oct 2026, on the Showroom from Mar 2027. Epic’s agents now call outside apps, instead of apps reaching into Epic. Point tools whose only job Penny can learn Specialist apps: revenue cycle, wayfinding, pharmacy delivery Middleware; portal-based products Connector builders; governance and testing tools; vendors with unique data
Prescription Marketplace: Announced Oct 2026, ships summer 2027. Pharmacies’ cash prices show next to the patient’s insured cost before a prescription is sent. Standalone price lookup tools (our view) Pharmacies, as price feeds inside the prescribing screen Middlemen whose value is hidden prices (our view) Cash-pay pharmacies; drugmakers with direct cash programs
Diagnostic Image Exchange: Released Aug 2026. Clinicians pull CTs, X-rays and MRIs from other health systems in one click, so no more CDs. Epic-to-Epic image courier services (our view) Image archives (PACS), as sources behind Epic CD-based and closed image-sharing workflows (our view) Radiology groups; imaging centers; imaging AI
Agent Factory + Art, Penny, Emmie : Agents since 2025, Agent Factory broadly available in 2027. Penny already drafts appeals, and Epic plans for it to submit straightforward ones on its own. Generic AI tools: basic appeal drafting, simple chatbots, simple automations Specialists reached through Connectors RPA, automation and custom integration shops Tools that help hospitals build and govern their own agents (our view)

So which bucket is your Product in?

Ask yourself one question: what does your product bring that Epic can’t make itself?
  • If the answer is nothing, you’re likely absorbed.
  • If your value is the pipe itself, the integration or the portal, you’re likely squeezed.
  • If you bring something real, like unique data, actual prices, the actual images or specialist judgment, you’re channelled or empowered. Empowered if Epic’s pipe opens a new market for you. Channelled if it only changes how people reach you.
The products that do well will be the ones Epic can’t build and its agents can’t do without. 
At Cennest, we work where the pipe is being standardized. We build SMART on FHIR integrations on Epic and Cerner today, and next, the Connectors and MCP servers that put specialist products inside Epic's workflow, along with testing for how agents actually behave against them.

Not sure which bucket you're in? Let's talk.

Team Cennest

References

 
Tags: