One-Woman Show

Judy Faulkner, the billionaire founder of Epic Systems, pioneered—then dominated—electronic medical records. She’s been the industry’s leading actor for decades, but now the pandemic is fuelling a digital health care race that may finally cost her the spotlight

- KATIE JENNINGS

A victorious swell of brass instruments reverberates across the 1,100-acre Epic Systems campus in Verona, Wisconsin, a sleepy suburb just outside Madison. It’s February 2020, and except for China and a couple of ill-fated cruise ships, there are few signs of the coronavirus pandemic that’s about to envelop the world. It’s certainly business as usual at Epic: The familiar strains of a baroque wedding march fill the hallways, stopping the health care software company’s 10,700 employees in their tracks. On cue, a new customer announcement follows: Florida-based AdventHealth plans to deploy Epic’s electronic health record system across 37 of its hospitals. The full installation will take over three years and cost around $650 million, not counting ongoing maintenance, which will cost millions more annually. “It’s a very long relationship for many of our customers,” says Epic’s founder and CEO Judy Faulkner in a rare interview. She got the idea for the wedding theme from a visit to the Mayo Clinic several decades earlier, where she heard lullabies play whenever a new baby was born. A new customer “didn’t feel like a new baby”, she says. “It felt more like a wedding.”