Epic to Launch Prescription Price Comparison Tool in 2027

Key points

• Epic will integrate a prescription marketplace into its electronic health record platform, enabling price comparisons at the point of care.
• The tool will display both insurance-covered costs and cash prices from various pharmacies, including Amazon, Costco, and Eli Lilly’s LillyDirect.
• Any pharmacy can share its cash prices with Epic users, creating a competitive marketplace for medication access.
• The launch is scheduled for summer 2027, following initial development work with Amazon Pharmacy that began in early 2025.
• The initiative addresses a KFF survey finding that over 40% of U.S. adults do not take medications as prescribed due to cost concerns.

Background

This development follows a broader trend in the U.S. healthcare sector toward direct-to-consumer models and price transparency. Recent legislative efforts, such as the Aviation Medication Transparency Act, have focused on clarifying medication access, while the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs has highlighted the growing private cash market for prescription drugs. Epic’s new tool extends its existing real-time prescription benefit feature, which has already demonstrated significant cost savings for patients.

How outlets are covering it

Fierce Healthcare emphasizes the practical integration of price comparison into clinical workflows, highlighting quotes from Amazon, Mark Cuban, and Eli Lilly executives who stress the importance of transparency and convenience for patients. Distilled Post frames the story through a UK lens, noting that while the NHS has a different pricing structure, the initiative offers a structural lesson for British health policy. It argues that Epic’s open marketplace model could influence how NHS trusts evaluate digital tools for patient cost awareness, particularly as private cash markets for drugs like tirzepatide grow in the UK.

Why it matters

By embedding price transparency directly into the prescribing process, Epic aims to eliminate the gap between clinical advice and pharmacy costs, potentially reducing medication abandonment. The move signals a shift in how major health systems and pharmaceutical companies collaborate to address affordability, moving beyond traditional insurance models to include cash pricing options that may be cheaper for certain patients.

What to watch

The prescription marketplace is slated to launch in summer 2027. In the interim, Epic will likely continue refining the integration with its existing real-time prescription benefit feature. Stakeholders, including NHS leaders in the UK, may begin evaluating similar transparency features for their own digital health platforms, while U.S. pharmacies will prepare to share pricing data with Epic users.