What You Should Know
- Cloud communications provider Vonage, a subsidiary of Ericsson, announced the deployment of its Branded Calling technology natively within Epic Systems’ Hello World communication platform.
- Built using the programmable Vonage Voice API, the integration enables hospitals and ambulatory clinics to display their verified organization name, corporate logo, and specific reason for calling directly on a patient’s mobile handset before the call is answered.
- The feature addresses severe telecommunications friction where close to 90 percent of unidentified enterprise calls go unanswered nationwide due to aggressive carrier call-blocking algorithms, third-party spam filters, and patient mistrust of unknown numbers.
- Health systems utilizing Epic Hello World have conducted automated patient engagement campaigns that prevented more than 3.4 million appointment no-shows over the trailing 12 months.
Overcoming Spam Filters with Rich Handset Identity
Rather than displaying an unrecognized 10-digit number or generic “Spam Likely” warning, Branded Calling allows Epic health systems to present verified call metadata:
- Rich Identity Display: Transmits the health system’s full verified name, registered logo, and the explicit contextual reason for calling (such as “Lab Result Follow-up,” “Surgery Scheduling,” or “Appointment Confirmation”) directly to supported mobile operating systems.
- Native Epic Hello World Integration: Operates directly inside Epic’s Hello World omnichannel communications engine, aligning automated telephone campaigns with EHR clinical workflows, MyChart scheduling rules, and cadence preferences without requiring separate telephony interfaces.
Operational Benchmarks and Patient Engagement Velocity
The deployment targets major clinical access and operational pain points:
- 45% Call Answer Rates: Epic reports that early health system adopters of Branded Calling have achieved call answer rates approaching 45%, significantly outperforming standard outbound healthcare call center baselines.
- Preventing Clinic No-Shows: Health systems deploying automated Hello World outreach have prevented more than 3.4 million missed visits over the past 12 months. Branded identity provides an added conversion layer to confirm or reschedule upcoming appointments before slots expire.
- Closed-Loop Care Recall: One provider utilizing Hello World’s automated outreach successfully scheduled more than 220 visits for patients who had missed earlier care—representing a 14% recall conversion rate that brought patients back into active management and recovered clinic schedule utilization.
Securing the Outbound Telephony Channel
The Vonage and Epic collaboration underscores a broader industry push to secure provider-to-patient communication channels amid escalating telecom spoofing and STIR/SHAKEN regulatory enforcement.
While health systems have poured resources into patient portals and SMS notifications, time-sensitive and complex clinical exchanges—such as triaging acute post-operative symptoms or walking through pre-admission instructions—still depend heavily on live phone conversations. By embedding programmable network APIs and branded caller validation natively into Epic’s core communications architecture, health systems can systematically protect their outbound telephone reputation, insulate patients from bad-actor impersonation, and safeguard operational clinical capacity.
“When a patient misses a visit, their care is disrupted and the health system loses time and resources that could have gone to another patient,” said Borno Akhter, who leads Hello World development at Epic. “Branded Calling helps patients stay connected to their care by replacing an unknown number with a familiar name.”
