The news: Nearly 15,000 doctors and assistants at over 150 health systems across the US are using a new generative AI (genAI) feature in Epic’s MyChart patient portal to respond to their patients’ messages, per The New York Times.

• The feature, dubbed In Basket Art, leverages a version of GPT-4, the tech ChatGPT is based on, that complies with medical privacy laws to pull in context from patients’ previous messages and information from their electronic health records.
• The feature then generates a draft response that clinicians review and approve, or change, before replying.

Zooming out: Physicians and patients flocked to MyChart to communicate during the pandemic, when in-person appointments were heavily restricted. But as other aspects of healthcare returned to normal post-pandemic, this patient behavior remained, leaving overburdened doctors with another time-consuming responsibility.