The EHR is poised to evolve from its original role as a place to store patient information. The next step is for it to take a more active role in the patient care journey.
As more of the journey becomes digitized, the EHR can help move work forward by connecting workflows, surfacing what needs attention, and using AI to reduce administrative burden. This shifts the EHR from a system of record to a system of action.
In ambulatory care, that shift has practical implications. Scheduling, documentation, billing, care coordination, and follow-up depend on one another. Today, much of the responsibility for keeping those processes moving still falls on people and is often spread across different systems. As EHRs become more intelligent, they can make that coordination easier by surfacing relevant information, identifying what needs attention, and helping users take an informed next step more quickly.
That does not mean removing people from the process. There are decisions that require professional judgment and always will. But there is a difference between doing the tedious, repetitive tasks and going through multiple steps required to get to that resolution. Technology should help users reach the needed destination faster and with less manual effort.
AI is an opportunity to make that shift possible at scale. Rather than simply making individual tasks faster, an AI-enabled EHR can help providers and staff navigate the broader workflows surrounding patient care and reduce the manual effort required to keep work moving across the practice. The bigger opportunity is to create a more connected experience for both the people delivering care and the patients moving through it.
Five years from now, I expect that distinction to be much more visible. Clinicians and staff will still direct care, but the EHR will increasingly be expected to recognize where work needs to go and help advance it, with appropriate support for the process and those using the process.
This evolution may also change what we mean when we talk about an EHR. For years, practices have added separate technologies around the core system to address needs that the EHR could not meet. That created an increasingly large technology stack, with different vendors responsible for different pieces of the patient and practice experiences.
As the EHR becomes more capable, the boundaries between it and the broader technology stack will become more unified. Practices will be able to manage more of their clinical, administrative, and financial workflows through a single platform, with AI increasingly embedded across those workflows to help connect and move work forward. The important question will be how much of the practice can be managed through one platform and how well that platform can adapt as the practice changes.
This will put more responsibility on EHR vendors. Adding individual AI capabilities is relatively easy compared to embedding them into workflows across a platform in a way that is secure, reliable, and appropriate for healthcare. Vendors will need to think carefully about permissions, transparency, and where human review belongs.
The EHR was originally built to record what happens during care. Its next evolution will be to help surface more of what happened before, what needs to happen next, and where focus should be placed as the patient journey progresses. The goal will be to reduce the burden on providers and staff while keeping them in control of the final outcome. That is a much bigger change than simply tacking on more features. It is the evolution of the EHR into a system of action.
About Baha Zeidan
Baha Zeidan is the founder and chief strategy officer of Azalea Health. He founded the company in 2008. Over 18 years as CEO, Baha built Azalea into a provider of a cloud-based health IT platform that serves more than 7,000 providers and 22 million patients across rural and community healthcare settings. He transitioned to chief strategy officer in October 2026 and continues to serve on the board of directors. As chief strategy officer, he leads M&A and key client and partner relationships.
