Summary
Epic released native AI charting to general availability in February 2026, folding ambient listening and note drafting directly into the EHR with no third-party vendor in the loop. For Epic health systems this is the most important thing to happen to the scribe market since it began.
The reasoning is plain. The hardest problem for every third-party scribe is writing the note back into the chart. Epic does not have that problem, because Epic is the chart.
So the honest answer splits in two. If you are an Epic organisation, evaluate the native tool first and make the third parties beat it. If you are a private clinic that has never touched Epic, none of this reaches you, and the question is what covers your actual day.
Not on Epic? See the system built for the private clinic instead. Thirty minutes.
Book a demoIf you are on Epic
Start with the native tool. Integration is the moat every vendor fights for and Epic holds it by definition, with the note, the orders and the history in one system. Third parties like Abridge earn their keep now by being meaningfully better at the note itself, and for some specialties they still are.
Run both against a week of real clinics and let your clinicians pick. That evaluation costs you little and settles the argument with evidence rather than sales decks.
If you are not on Epic
Most private clinics in the UK have never seen Epic and never will. For you, Epic's release matters only as market weather. Your question is unchanged. What covers the enquiry, the booking, the note, the letter, the code and the recall, in a clinic where the same three people do all of it.
A scribe alone, from any vendor, answers a sixth of that. WA\ answers it as one record with a published price, which is why we built it as a system rather than a feature.
What the evidence says
Native or third-party, the clinical evidence rules stay the same. One randomised trial exists in this category, Nabla's, with a 9.5 percent cut in note-writing time, about 41 seconds an encounter. Simulated-encounter work puts average hallucination near 7 percent, so the clinician signs everything regardless of the logo on the tool.
Vendor accuracy claims, Epic's included, are internal measurements until a trial says otherwise. Ours too.
The decision in one paragraph
Epic organisation, evaluate native first and make challengers prove a margin. Everyone else, stop reading Epic news and ask which system covers your whole day. For a private clinic that answer is not a scribe at all, it is the clinic on one record, and that is the product we sell.
Frequently asked questions
Is Epic's AI charting as good as Abridge or a dedicated scribe?
Epic's native charting won general availability in February 2026 and its integration advantage is structural, since it writes into its own chart. Whether its note quality beats a specialist like Abridge varies by specialty and is best settled by running both on a week of your own clinics. For Epic organisations that head-to-head is now the rational first step before buying any third party.
Does Epic's AI charting matter for UK private clinics?
Barely. Epic runs a small number of large UK hospital deployments and almost no private clinics. A UK private practice choosing clinic software is not choosing between Epic and a scribe, it is choosing what covers enquiries, bookings, notes, letters and coding together. WA\ is built for that whole set on one record, UK-native, with a published price.
Will native EHR AI kill third-party scribes?
It compresses them. When the EHR drafts the note itself, a third party has to win on note quality, specialty depth or the work around the note. That last one is where WA\ sits, covering the front desk, the letters and the coding a charting feature does not touch, for clinics that do not run Epic at all.
Live this week, not next quarter.
Thirty minutes and you will see the consult, the front desk and the patient record running as one system.