Epic AI Scribe in 2026: Chart with Art vs Abridge, Dragon Copilot and Custom Scribes

Updated October 2026

Epic's AI scribe is AI Charting, now called Chart with Art: a feature built into Epic that listens to a patient visit, drafts the clinician's note and queues orders for the clinician to review and sign. Epic released it to customers on February 4, 2026, as part of Art, its set of AI tools for clinicians.

Most Epic health systems now need to know whether Chart with Art covers their specialties and sites, how it compares with Abridge, Microsoft Dragon Copilot and other scribes that already work inside Epic, and what to do where Epic's tool stops. This guide answers those questions for CMIOs, CIOs, ambulatory leaders and the digital health vendors who sell into Epic sites. It also shows how a custom scribe writes a note back into Epic, for teams that need to build one.

What is the Epic AI scribe?

The Epic AI scribe is Epic's own ambient documentation feature. Epic announced it as AI Charting in August 2025, released it on February 4, 2026, and by September 2026 was calling it Chart with Art. It records the conversation, drafts the visit note and suggests orders, all inside the Epic chart.

Epic's February 2026 release note describes it as "a built-in feature that listens during patient visits, drafts the clinician's note, and queues up orders based on the conversation." It is part of Art, Epic's AI for clinicians. Emmie is Epic's AI for patients in MyChart, and Penny is its AI for revenue cycle and operations. So when people search for "Epic Art", they usually mean this whole set of clinician tools, with ambient charting as the best-known part.

Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin announced on February 2, 2026 that it was the first organization to adopt it. Its press release states three points every buyer should note: the tool is used only with patient consent, visit recordings are stored for a limited time and are not used to train AI models, and providers remain fully responsible for reviewing and finalizing the note.

Epic uses the name "scribe" less than the market does. Its own pages talk about charting, drafting and queuing orders. So in vendor comparisons, "Epic AI scribe", "Epic AI Charting", "Chart with Art" and "Epic ambient AI" all refer to the same native capability.

What Chart with Art does today

Chart with Art drafts notes and queues orders from a recorded conversation. Epic's Art page also lists drafting for inpatient and ED visits, home health OASIS assessments and therapy progress notes, plus code and level-of-service suggestions. Each one is a separate capability that a health system turns on and builds locally.

The table lists what Epic itself publishes. It is not a guarantee that every capability is live at your organization, or that it covers every specialty well.

Two limits stand out. First, everything here works on data inside Epic. Second, a queued order is a suggestion. It does not become an order until the clinician signs it, which is the right design and also the main thing to test in a pilot.

How the Epic AI scribe workflow runs, step by step

The clinician opens the patient in Epic's mobile apps, gets consent, records the visit, and then reviews a draft note and queued orders in the chart before signing. Nothing reaches the legal record or the order queue as final until a clinician acts on it.

1. Consent. The clinician or staff tells the patient that the visit will be recorded and asks for agreement. Epic's first customer states the tool is used only with consent. State law may require every party's agreement (see the consent section below).
2. Record. The clinician selects the patient and visit in Haiku (phone) or Canto (tablet) and starts recording. Virtual visits can also be captured.
3. Draft. The conversation is transcribed and turned into a draft note in the clinician's note structure, with suggested orders and diagnoses.
4. Review. The clinician reads the draft in the chart, edits it and checks each queued order.
5. Sign. The clinician signs the note and signs or removes each order. Recordings are kept for a limited period under the organization's settings.

If the patient says no, the clinician documents the usual way. A good rollout plan makes that path just as quick, so declining never slows the visit.

Epic AI scribe vs Abridge vs Dragon Copilot inside Epic

All three can deliver a draft note inside the Epic chart. Chart with Art is built by Epic and sold by Epic. Abridge and Microsoft Dragon Copilot are separate products that connect to Haiku, Canto and Hyperdrive through Epic partnerships, and they also work outside Epic.

This is where most search results are written by a vendor selling one of the options. The table below sticks to what each company publishes, and marks where pricing and features are not public.

Sources: Epic newsroom and Art page; Microsoft's Dragon Copilot for Epic quick start guide; Abridge's June 2025 orders announcement; Nabla's Epic page; Fierce Healthcare and TechTarget reporting on Epic Toolbox and Workshop. Checked October 2026. Partner program labels change, so confirm the current listing in Epic Showroom.

For a wider comparison across EHRs, prices and specialties, see our AI medical scribe comparison.

Abridge Epic integration in practice

Abridge records in Haiku or on the desktop and returns the draft inside the Epic note, so clinicians stay in Epic. Abridge announced inpatient support and order suggestions inside Epic in June 2025. Large Epic systems have chosen it for depth across specialties and for its evaluation work. It is sold on enterprise terms with no public rate card.

Dragon Copilot (DAX Copilot) for Epic in practice

Microsoft's own quick start guide spells out the workflow. Before recording, the clinician adds Dragon Copilot SmartSections to the note with dot phrases such as .hpisec and .apsec. The clinician records in Haiku or Canto, an alert appears in Hyperdrive when processing finishes, and the AI sections fill into the note. Microsoft notes that features vary by organization, language and device, so test with your own build.

What the evidence says about ambient scribes in Epic

The strongest independent evidence is a randomized trial of two ambient scribes used in Epic at UCLA. It found a 9.5% drop in time-in-note for Nabla and no significant change for DAX Copilot. Epic's own figures for Chart with Art are larger, but they come from Epic and its customers, not independent trials.

The pattern across studies is consistent. Clinicians feel better with ambient tools, while measured time savings are smaller and vary by specialty and by how often the tool is actually used. Plan your business case on your own pilot data, not on headline numbers.

What the Epic AI scribe does not do

Chart with Art only works inside Epic, so it cannot serve non-Epic sites, a vendor's own product or data outside the Epic chart. Its specialty depth and features also depend on Epic's roadmap and your local build. You cannot choose the model or where it runs.

• Non-Epic sites. A medical group that runs Epic in its hospital and athenaOne or eClinicalWorks in affiliated clinics needs a second scribe for those clinics, or a scribe that works across both.
• Specialty structure. Behavioral health, oncology, orthopedics and other specialties often need structured fields, rating scales or templates. Some early reviews reported that summaries can be generic for specialists. Test your specialties on your own templates.
• Your own product. A digital health company, telehealth platform or specialty software vendor cannot embed Epic's scribe in its own app. It has to build or license one and integrate with Epic.
• Model and hosting choices. You do not choose the speech or language model, where it runs, or how long audio is kept beyond the options Epic exposes.
• Data outside Epic. Device data, outside records and payer rules that are not in the chart are not part of the draft.
• Roadmap timing. New settings and specialties arrive on Epic's release schedule. If a workflow is urgent, you wait or use a partner.

When do you still need a third-party or custom AI scribe?

Start with Chart with Art if you are all-Epic and your main specialties fit. Use a third-party scribe if you run several EHRs or need specialty depth now. Build a custom scribe if documentation is part of your own product, or if your workflow, data or hosting needs are ones no vendor covers.

If you build: how a custom AI scribe writes notes back into Epic

A custom scribe launches from the Epic chart with SMART on FHIR, reads patient and encounter context through Epic's FHIR APIs, and writes the finished note back with a FHIR DocumentReference create or an HL7 v2 MDM message. Orders go back as suggestions for the clinician to place in Epic.

This is the path for vendors and for health systems building their own scribe. It is also where most first projects slip, so here are the steps in the order they happen. Our Epic integration services team does this work for vendors and provider groups.

1. Register the app. Register with Epic's developer program and, for distribution to many Epic customers, plan for Epic Showroom. Our guide to getting through Epic Showroom covers the steps vendors rarely see documented.
2. Launch in context. Use a SMART on FHIR launch from Epic so the scribe opens on the right patient and encounter, with the clinician's identity.
3. Read context. Pull Patient, Encounter, problems, medications and recent notes through the Epic FHIR API to ground the draft.
4. Record and draft. Capture audio after consent, transcribe, separate speakers and draft the note in your own service, inside your PHI boundary.
5. Clinician review. Show the draft for editing. Keep a link from every sentence to the transcript so the clinician can check it.
6. Write the note. Epic's Clinical Notes create takes plain text and needs an encounter. HL7 v2 MDM through the health system's interface engine is the fallback when FHIR write is not enabled. Our DocumentReference guide for Epic, Oracle Health and athenahealth shows the differences field by field.
7. Orders. Present suggested orders for the clinician to place in Epic, or use an Epic-supported partner path where one exists. Do not treat a suggestion as an order.
8. Check it filed once. Read back the note, store the returned ID, and use it to stop duplicates after a timeout or retry.

Here is the shape of a DocumentReference create for a progress note. All values are synthetic.

POST [base]/api/FHIR/R4/DocumentReference
Content-Type: application/fhir+json

{
  "resourceType": "DocumentReference",
  "status": "current",
  "docStatus": "preliminary",
  "type": { "coding": [{ "system": "http://loinc.org", "code": "11506-3", "display": "Progress note" }] },
  "category": [{ "coding": [{ "system": "http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core/CodeSystem/us-core-documentreference-category", "code": "clinical-note" }] }],
  "subject": { "reference": "Patient/eSYNTHETIC-PATIENT-001" },
  "author": [{ "reference": "Practitioner/eSYNTHETIC-CLINICIAN-001" }],
  "context": { "encounter": [{ "reference": "Encounter/eSYNTHETIC-ENCOUNTER-001" }] },
  "content": [{
    "attachment": {
      "contentType": "text/plain",
      "data": "U1VCSkVDVElWRTogU3ludGhldGljIGV4YW1wbGUgbm90ZS4="
    }
  }]
}

Send docStatus preliminary where the site supports it, and always include the encounter, the LOINC note type and the author. Whether the note lands as a draft for the clinician to sign or as a signed note depends on the site's Epic setup and the status you send. Confirm it in the customer's test environment before go-live. Our guide to building an AI clinical scribe beyond the prototype covers the production problems that appear after the demo.

Consent, privacy and HIPAA questions for any Epic AI scribe

Every ambient scribe in Epic, native or third party, needs patient consent, a business associate agreement where a vendor touches PHI, clear audio retention rules, and a written answer on whether recordings train models. State recording laws can require every party in the room to agree.

• Consent. Some states require all parties to agree to a recording, and Texas requires providers to disclose AI use in treatment. Get consent before recording, record the answer in the chart, and make declining easy. Our ambient AI scribe implementation guide has a consent form template and a state table.
• Business associate agreement. HIPAA requires a BAA with any vendor that creates, receives or keeps PHI for you. A BAA covers HIPAA only. It does not replace state recording consent.
• Retention. Ask how long audio and transcripts are kept, where, and who can listen. Epic's first customer says recordings are kept for a limited time; get the number in writing.
• Model training. Ask whether audio, transcripts or edits train any model, and whether that is opt-in.
• Access and audit. Confirm who can see recordings and drafts, and that access is logged.

For the engineering side of these controls, see our guide to what a HIPAA compliant AI medical scribe needs.

How to run a 60-day Epic AI scribe pilot

Pick two or three specialties, compare Chart with Art against one partner scribe, and measure time-in-note, after-hours charting, edit effort and errors from your own Epic data. Decide on scale only after the second month, once clinicians are past the learning curve.

Test hard cases on purpose: an interpreter visit, a family member speaking, a sensitive topic the patient asks to keep out of the note, a clinician switching between two patients, a dropped connection, and an order mentioned but not agreed. Each one should end in a correct draft or a clear warning.

What does the Epic AI scribe cost?

Epic has not published a price for Chart with Art, and Abridge and Microsoft do not publish list prices for their Epic-integrated scribes. Cost depends on your Epic contract, the number of clinicians and the setup work, so ask each vendor for a full first-year quote.

Ask for the same lines from each option: license per clinician or per visit, setup and build work in Epic, training, support, and the cost to leave. Add your own build time: note templates, SmartSections or SmartPhrases, consent fields and Signal reporting. Then set that against the time saved in your pilot, priced at what an hour of clinician time is worth to you. Time saved is not cash saved unless it becomes more visits or less overtime.

How Nirmitee helps with Epic AI scribes

We are an engineering company. We do not sell Epic, Abridge or Dragon Copilot. We build ambient documentation and the Epic integration around it for digital health vendors and provider groups.

• We have built an AI documentation assistant inside a behavioral health EHR: consent capture, bounded transcription, drafts grounded in the conversation, clinician sign-off and prompt version control. The lessons are in our prompt governance guide.
• We integrate with Epic, Oracle Health and athenahealth through FHIR, SMART on FHIR and HL7 v2.
• We are ISO 27001:2022 certified and sign BAAs.
• Best for: vendors adding a scribe to their product, and groups needing one scribe across several EHRs. Not the right fit if you only need to switch on Epic's native tool; Epic and your internal team do that.

See our healthcare AI solutions and voice to clinical notes case study, or book a scoping call to talk through your Epic sites.