athenahealth CEO Reveals Enthusiastic Use of Epic’s MyChart

WATERTOWN, Mass., April 1 – In a recent interview with health information technology blog HIStalk, CEO Jonathan Bush of the electronic health record vendor athenahealth revealed that he uses – and admires – the MyChart patient portal application developed by one of his company’s competitors, Epic.

In the unedited video interview, posted Friday, Bush raves excitedly about the “splendid usability,” “wealth of information,” and “chill vibe” of his healthcare provider’s patient portal. He offers an example: “Like a few weeks ago – I pulled my phone out after my duet with Erykah Badu at SXSW because I remembered I needed to schedule some vaccinations. Tom Hardy and I are running an ultramarathon in Madagascar next month. Anyway, I had them scheduled in under a minute. See, this kind of positively disruptive patient empowerment is exactly what athenahealth is about.”

When told by the interviewer that the application is Epic’s, and not athenahealth’s, Bush expresses incredulity: “Well, that’s not right. It’s mine. I track my dives on MyScuba. I post my arbor sculptures on MyTreeShaping. And I [expletive] well look at my chart on MyChart. C’mon. Epic would call that EpicChart or something.”