Epic visits Penn Medicine to help reimagine clinical spaces and the EHR

A new Penn Medicine building offers an opportunity:

Penn Medicine will open a Montgomeryville location in 2027 with a multi-specialty set of practices.

“We have the opportunity to build a building from the ground up with the latest technology in mind,” Dr. Srinath Adusumalli, Vice President and Chief Health Information Officer at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and CHIBE affiliate said.

“Prompted by our operational partner, Danielle Werner, Vice President and Executive Director of the Clinical Practices of the University of Pennsylvania, we thought: shouldn’t we think about that in a fundamentally different way that would incorporate the ‘art of the possible,’ so to speak, with available technologies — AI or otherwise? We set out to think about the practice of the future, and how that should look from a people, process, and technology standpoint,” Dr. Adusumalli said.

The first step:

A Penn team got together internally and then brought in architects to discuss the floor plans for the building. They envisioned the flow of the space and had several design sessions that mapped out everything from prior to post-visit. They thought about what an ideal journey might look like for a patient and adjusted what the blueprints were for the building based on those discussions.

Bringing in Epic:

The team had a vision, but they also saw an opportunity to collaborate with Epic, its electronic health record (EHR) vendor. They had several design sessions with Epic in a conference room, then took the conversations into prefabricated pods with exam rooms and walked through them together. They talked about where the computer monitors might go and where the patients and clinicians would be situated and simulated a couple different scenarios. 

How the arrival space at Penn Medicine Montgomeryville will look different:

In the lobby area, the team is envisioning that as more time goes on, people will use their phones to check in (like at the airport) and then be able to go straight up to an exam room. However, there will also be kiosks to check in, and some patients will want a helping hand from a human, so there will be a few people behind the desk; this allows patients to pursue the option that suits them best. 

How the exam rooms will look different:

The orientation of the table in the exam rooms will be set up so that the patient and clinician can look at each other, rather than in some exam rooms where the clinician is at a computer at a desk and has their back to the patient.

The monitor will be in a more shared space, and they also determined that it would be beneficial to have two monitors: one for the clinician and the other for sharing with the patient. They also did some wiring work in case cameras will be used in the future or if clinicians switch to being more tablet-dependent. They also opted for more modular equipment like carts that can come in and out instead of permanent cabinetry to create more space.

“We’re creating a more spacious and interactive environment for the patient and clinician,” Dr. Adusumalli said.

If the layout of a room can influence how a clinician and patient interact, what about the design of a screen?

Penn and Epic’s conversations went beyond reimagining a physical space. The two groups met recently to talk about guiding decisions at scale through the EHR.

Meeting with Epic about behavioral science:

In February 2026, the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit (led by CHIBE Associate Director Dr. Kit Delgado) and Epic had an on-site collaboration meeting about behavioral science, behavior change, and technology.

Theme of the conversation:

“With the great leadership here at Penn, and under Kevin Volpp‘s leadership with what you might call the birthplace of behavioral science and medicine, and with the expertise of the Nudge Unit since 2016, we thought about what we could share with Epic based on our learnings of using their system and then our knowledge of behavioral science that then could help others,” Dr. Adusumalli said. “That was the theme of the conversation – is how do we take the science that we are developing here locally within our system, and scale that throughout the Epic system to other Epic customers, and potentially even study at larger-scale levels. It was a great set of productive conversations.”

Thinking about the future with AI:

The groups also discussed how in the age of AI, there is a whole new set of levers to move decision-making in the EHR. They talked about opportunities to co-create in that space and design tools with behavioral science and behavior change in mind.

Key takeaway of this collaboration with Epic:

“The EHR is such a large choice engine, and we’re at a pivotal point in technology development with a whole new paradigm of ways to impact those choices in ways they’re aligned with health,” Dr. Adusumalli said. “With the insights that CHIBE scientists create, we are trying to use – in the spirit of developing and learning health systems – to directly inform the creation of this choice engine within our health system, and then nationally and internationally. And there are different ways to do that – whether that’s how we design our physical spaces, whether that’s how a tool like Chart Hero is designed, or whether that’s the way that we collaborate collectively with Epic.”

Photo credit: Odelia Ghodsizadeh, Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation (CHTI)