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This guide provides a brief introduction to applications and some of their general keywords. It’s meant to link your knowledge of hospital and clinic terminology and workflows to the relevant areas of Epic. It’s not intended to teach clinical terms or specific terminology. View the Epic Glossary.
Core Clinical Applications
Learn about the core applications used for patient care.
| Epic Application | Service Line | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ASAP | Emergency Department | ASAP is used by staff to document clinical care in the Emergency Department (ED). |
| EpicCare Ambulatory | Outpatient clinical care | EpicCare Ambulatory is Epic’s outpatient clinical application. It’s used by physicians, nurses, and other clinical staff to document and manage outpatient care, including office visits, telephone calls, e-visits, and refill requests. |
| EpicCare Inpatient – Clin Doc | Inpatient clinical documentation | EpicCare Inpatient – Clin Doc is used for documentation on admitted patients, usually in hospitals. It is one half of EpicCare Inpatient. |
| EpicCare Inpatient – Orders | Inpatient orders | EpicCare Inpatient – Orders covers providers’ orders for admitted patients. It is the other half of EpicCare Inpatient. |
Ancillary Clinical Applications
Learn about more specific areas within patient care.
| Epic Application | Service Line | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Anesthesia | Anesthesia | Anesthesia is used with any patient/procedure requiring anesthesia. |
| Beacon | Oncology | Beacon is Epic’s application for clinical care of patients with cancer, in both the hospital and clinic settings. |
| Beaker | Lab | Beaker is Epic’s laboratory application used to document the reviewing, processing, and results of clinical and anatomic pathology tests and cases. |
| Beans | Dialysis & Nephrology | Beans is Epic’s dialysis application for managing outpatient dialysis care. |
| Behavioral Health | Behavioral Health | Behavioral Health helps clinicians treat patients with mental health disorders, developmental disorders, behavioral disorders, substance use disorders, and addiction. |
| Bones | Orthopaedics | Bones is designed specifically for orthopaedic surgeons, providers, and their support staff, including podiatrists and sports medicine providers. |
| Bugsy | Infection Control | Bugsy is used for infection control to monitor and report certain types of infections (i.e. MRSA, sepsis) in inpatient settings. |
| Clinical Case Management | Case Management | Clinical Case Management is used to support inpatient case management workflows, including utilization management and discharge planning. |
| Compass Rose | Coordinated Care Management | Compass Rose helps support care coordination needs, including population health, social care, medication therapy management, health plan case management, and community programs. |
| Cupid | Cardiology | Cupid is used to order, document, and share results of non-invasive and invasive cardiology care. |
| Dermatology | Dermatology | Dermatology is Epic’s dermatology module for managing conditions of the skin, hair, and nails. It centralizes biopsy and treatment documentation, simplifying the tracking of conditions over time. |
| Dorothy and Comfort | Home healthcare and hospice home healthcare | Dorothy and Comfort are used for care provided outside of the hospital. Dorothy is for general home health, and Comfort is the hospice application. |
| Endocrinology | Endocrinology | The Endocrinology application is related to care for the endocrine system, which is produces and regulates hormones. The largest area of study within this specialty is diabetes. |
| Fertility | Reproductive Endocrinology & Embryology | The Fertility application is used for reproductive endocrinology treatment and includes features for embryology labs. |
| Genetics and Genomics | Genetics and Genomics | Genetics and Genomics tools in Epic assist with documenting family history, genetic testing, pharmacogenomic indicators, and somatic and germline conditions. |
| Healthy Planet | Population Health | Healthy Planet is Epic’s population health module and is used to define and understand populations, engage populations through outreach and care management, and track populations with outreach tracking and analytics. |
| Kaleidoscope | Ophthalmology | Kaleidoscope is Epic’s ophthalmology application, providing subspecialty eye exam layouts, imaging and procedure documentation with one-step medications injections, and cataract planning capabilities. |
| Long-Term Care | Long-term care | Long-Term Care is designed for U.S. skilled nursing and long-term care facilities, providing clinical, regulatory, and billing features to support resident care and MDS workflows. |
| Lumens | Endoscopy | Lumens is used to order, document, and share results of endoscopic care. |
| Nurse Triage | Clinical call triage | Nurse Triage is used to document and triage telephone calls from patients. Questionnaires called protocols are used to determine the next steps a patient should take (i.e. go to urgent care, schedule an appointment, home care). |
| OpTime | Surgery | OpTime is used to prepare, schedule, and document information related to surgery and the operating room. |
| Phoenix | Transplantation | Phoenix is used in transplant units and centers for transplant-specific documentation. |
| Radiant | Radiology | Radiant is used to order, schedule, and perform non-invasive and interventional radiology imaging procedures. |
| Rehab | Rehab and therapy | Rehab covers therapy services, including physical, occupational, and speech therapy. It provides therapy-specific documentation, time tracking, and workflows for both inpatient and outpatient therapy teams. |
| Research | Clinical research | The Research application assists with tracking patients, encounters, orders, tasks, and other documentation to support clinical trials and research studies. |
| Stork | Obstetrics and Labor & Delivery | Stork is used to document a patient’s entire pregnancy, from the first prenatal visit to the hospital for delivery to the postpartum visit. |
| Willow Ambulatory | Outpatient pharmacy | Willow Ambulatory is used in outpatient pharmacies to fill and dispense prescriptions. It can also refer to the software client used by Willow Ambulatory users. |
| Willow Home Infusion | Home infusion | Willow Home Infusion is the application that manages home infusion pharmacy workflows, including patient outreach and monitoring, shipping medications to patients, and triggering pharmacy charges. |
| Willow Inpatient | Inpatient pharmacy | Willow Inpatient is used for the ordering, verifying, preparing, dispensing, and charging of medications in the hospital setting for admitted patients. |
| Willow Inventory | Pharmacy inventory | Willow Inventory is the application that supports medication inventory tracking and replenishment across outpatient and inpatient settings. |
| Willow Specialty Pharmacy | Specialty pharmacy | Willow Specialty Pharmacy is the application that coordinates and manages high-cost and high-risk medications. |
| Wisdom | Dental and Orthodontics | Wisdom provides tools and workflows for dentistry and orthodontics. |
| Wound Care | Wound care | Used alongside EpicCare Inpatient and EpicCare Ambulatory, Wound Care provides clinicians with additional tools to track and document healing. |
Access Applications
Learn about areas related to patient movement, registration, scheduling, and medical records.
| Epic Application | Service Line | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Grand Central | Patient movement/flow | Grand Central is used for real-time management of patient movement and flow within healthcare facilities. |
| Cadence | Scheduling | Cadence is used for scheduling appointments in outpatient areas, such as clinics and hospital-based outpatient departments, where patients are seen but not admitted. |
| Prelude | Patient registration | Prelude is the application for managing registration at the front desk or central registration station. |
| Welcome | Patient self-check-in | Welcome offers patients self-service options at the start of the care process and supplements staff-driven registration and check-in workflows. |
| Referrals and Authorizations | Referrals and authorizations | Referrals are how providers can send their patient to receive care from another provider. Authorizations coordinates with payers to make sure the care is approved by insurance before starting the treatment. |
| Health Information Management (HIM) | Health information management | Health Information Management (HIM) is a group of modules used to help organizations ensure that health information and medical records are up to date and appropriately accessible. |
| Indentity | Patient database | Identity is used to manage the patient database and ensure each patient has a single record with correct identifiers and documentation. |
| Gallery | Scanning and document management | Gallery is a module for high-volume file acquisition and document management, including batch scanning, incoming fax integration, and ancillary imports. It helps index documents efficiently using barcode scanning, metadata reading, and optical character recognition. |
| Cheers | Campaigns and contact management/call management | Cheers is Epic’s suite of customer relationship management and automated enterprise communication tools. It has two modules: Call Management is for customer contact and service, and Campaigns proactively engages with patients and attracts new patients. |
| Hello World | Patient messaging or patient communication | Hello World is Epic’s enterprise communication services application, which helps coordinate communication through a growing number of preferred communication methods, including text messages (SMS) and email. |
Revenue Applications
Learn about areas related to billing, charging, and claims.
| Epic Application | Service Line | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Hospital Billing | Non-physician (technical) charges | Hospital Billing is used for collecting, reviewing, and billing facility (aka hospital) charges to insurance companies and patients. |
| Professional Billing | Physician charges | Professional Billing is used in billing offices, clinics and practices, and hospitals for collecting, reviewing, and billing professional charges to insurance companies and patients. |
| Charge Router | Charges from clinical to billing | The Charge Router is the connection between clinical applications (both Epic and third-party interfaces) and the billing applications. With configuration, it allows for the creation and routing of charges, as well as review of and automated updates to those charges. |
| Claims & Remittance | Insurance claims | Claims relates closely to billing and is used to send professional billing and hospital billing claims to insurance companies and receive electronic remittance payments back. |
| Tapestry | Managed care | Tapestry is a set of modules that help manage health insurance operations within Epic. It is used to track enrollment, authorize services, manage high-risk members, pay claims and make capitation payments, respond to member and provider inquiries, collect premium or capitation payments, and engage members, providers, and employers. |
Other Applications and Concepts
| Epic Application | Service Line | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Cogito | Reporting and analytics tools | Cogito is Epic’s reporting and analytics suite, which includes Clarity, Caboodle, Dashboards (Radar), Reporting Workbench, SlicerDicer, and the Analytics Catalog. |
| Cosmos | Cosmos | Cosmos is a community collaboration system that allows its users to leverage data submitted by over 300 Epic organizations to improve health through research and clinical integration. |
| MyChart | Patient portal | MyChart is a patient portal that gives patients easy access to their medical record and helps them stay connected with their care team. |
| Care Everywhere | Sharing patient records among organizations | Care Everywhere is used to exchange patient information between healthcare organizations. |
| EpicCare Link | Sharing information with outside clinicians | EpicCare Link is Epic’s tool for granting community access to an organization’s patient database through a web browser. |
| In Basket | Message-based task management | In Basket is Epic’s message-based task management system, primarily used to provide patient care or follow-up. Users can take action on results, prescription refills, patient messages in MyChart, and more. |
| Telehealth | Virtual care | Telehealth focuses on improving efficiency and access to healthcare through video and messaging technology. |
Administrator Applications and Concepts
| Epic Application and Concepts | Service Line | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Bridges | Interfaces between Epic and other systems | Bridges is the Epic toolkit for interfacing Epic applications with external systems, including interface profiles and utilities for configuring and maintaining interfaces. |
| Data Courier & Content Management | Data migration between Epic environments | Data Courier is how analysts move or copy their build from the build environments to the production environment that most users work in. Content Management is used to track builds that are ready, not ready, or already moved. |
| Interconnect | Epic’s web services application | Interconnect is a framework for communication between Epic’s Chronicles database and the rest of the world. This communication uses common data-sharing systems, like the Internet, to enable integrations across the Epic ecosystem. |
| BLOB Services | Server for images and scanned documents | A secondary fileserver that communicates additional stored information with Epic’s main server. These servers normally store files that take up a lot of room, such as images or scanned documents. BLOB stands for binary large object. |
Applications
Software to access Epic’s applications
| Application | Service Line | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Hyperspace | Core software application | Most users who log in will only use Hyperspace. This is the desktop version of the software and is installed on most workstations. |
| Guesthouse | Software application for some contracted vendor users | Guesthouse is a version of Hyperspace with some modifications to allow access to offshore or onshore consultant vendors. |
| Text | Software application for some administrator or analyst builds | Text helps analysts and administrators support workflows not currently in Hyperspace. It may also be referred to by the emulator name, typically Putty or Reflections. |
| Rover, Haiku, Canto, and Limerick | Mobile applications allowing users to complete certain workflows on mobile devices | Rover: mobile application Haiku: cell phone application Canto: tablet application Limerick: smartwatch application |
| Willow Ambulatory | Software application for Willow Ambulatory users | Willow Ambulatory pharmacy users often log in to the Willow Ambulatory software instead of Hyperspace. All issues related to Willow Ambulatory (both the client and application) will go to the same team. |
| Remote Client | Software application for some Dorothy and Comfort users | Home health and hospice-related clinicians use Remote Client in patient homes to access offline documentation. |
Epic Environments
| Name | Acronym | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Production | PRD | Real-life Epic; used to access all information after go-live. All patient care, billing, and scheduling should take place here. |
| Content Review | CRE | Training environment for users to practice realistic workflow scenarios (specifically the day-in-the-life/readiness activities) and mimics your organization’s Epic build. It refreshes nightly and is built and maintained by your Epic training team. It’s used when organizations have opted for Epic Lead training. |
| Guesthouse | N/A | Guesthouse is the Epic environment used for contracted vendors. |
| Willow Ambulatory | WAM | Used for accessing the Willow Ambulatory (outpatient pharmacy) module and environment |
| Support | SUP | Support environment, nightly copy down of PRD with real patient and user data. Used for login testing & Shadow Charting activities. Used by analysts after go-live if needed for support |