Epic is an Electronic Health Record (EHR) used in hospitals all over the country. If you work in healthcare you know who they are. Epic is the top EHR system in the U.S. and they continue to gobble up market share.
According to the Epic website, the pharmacy information system (PhIS) inside Epic is officially known as the “Willow Inpatient Pharmacy Systemâ€. However, I commonly hear it referred to as simply Willow.
Over the span of my 19 year career I’ve used several pharmacy information systems, but never Willow. For whatever reason the hospitals I’ve worked in have used other EHR and/or pharmacy system vendors; GE, Siemens, MEDITECH, IDX, etc. Recently I had the opportunity to spend a couple days learning how to use Willow. I was pretty excited. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Willow, and some bad. I’ve been wanting to get firsthand knowledge for quite some time.
Disclaimer: These are my initial impressions. Two days of training isn’t nearly enough time to learn all the ins and outs of a pharmacy system. I’ve recently accepted a position where I will be using Epic, albeit not in a full-time capacity, so I’m sure that my thoughts and opinions will evolve over time.