Electronic health record giant Epic has launched an upgrade – Share Everywhere – calling it “a big leap forward in interoperability.”

“Patients should be able to easily share their health information with anyone they choose, no matter where they are. Share Everywhere now makes this possible,” Janet Campbell, Epic vice president of patient engagement, said in a statement.

Key features of the upgrade include the ability for patients to give access to any health care providers with access to the internet – even without an EHR.

In addition, a provider can use it to relay notes back to a patient's health care organization.

Share Everywhere lets a patient use a smartphone to send their Epic chart to any clinician. Since the patient decides about access, patient privacy is both protected and not an issue.

As an extra measure, Epic tracks all such access.

Share Everywhere will be free to Epic users through an update to its MyChart patient portal due in November, said the company.

Epic has long built interoperability into its system, especially via Care Everywhere, which permits swapping of as many as two million records a day with both Epic and non-Epic software.

Epic also made news this month when Navicure integrated its medical claims system.

The integration permits processing of payments directly within the Epic system, such as MyChart, the Epic Welcome Kiosk and Epic Resolute.

In July, Mayo Clinic began a massive $1.5 billion project to integrate all its electronic health record and billing systems with the implementation of Epic at its Mayo Clinic Health System sites in Wisconsin, which was called an “absolutely a huge milestone,” by Dr. Timothy Johnson, regional vice president for Mayo Clinic Health System at the time.

“Having an integrated electronic health record across all of our sites can help us with our core mission of meeting patient needs,” said Dr. Steve Peters, chief medical information officer, Mayo Clinic. “It’s taking the best practices of Mayo Clinic to benefit all patients at all sites – converging on a common set of tools and bringing the best of Mayo Clinic to each patient’s care.”

Another huge move for Epic came in March, when CVS announced that it would be deployed for CVS Specialty's care management programs.

"As the specialty pharmacy of choice for many payors and patients, we are focused on creating the most clinically advanced specialty pharmacy experience, to help improve care and outcomes for our patients," Dr. Alan Lotvin, executive vice president of CVS Specialty said in a statement.

According to an April report by Kalorama Information, Cerner, McKesson and Epic saw market-share position unchanged from the year prior, though percentages shifted “a bit.”

Epic is third in market share, according Kalorama. That said, it is “the vendor for Kaiser Permanente and many other large health care companies and has many new innovative solutions that are of interest to large hospitals, capturing a significant share of the new business in the EMR market,” according to the report.

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