As most of you know, as part of Fun Friday I’d regularly feature the @EpicEMRParody and the various parody tweets they’d send. Not too surprising, but the account is now gone. I haven’t heard the official story of what happened, but my guess is that it was taken down based on some trademark claim. Parody is actually protected, but that doesn’t mean that Twitter has to listen. Plus, whoever was doing the account probably didn’t want to fight the battle against a company with deep pockets when they were just doing it for fun.
It’s too bad that it’s gone because it was hilarious. However, they probably should have been more careful in how they approached using trademark. Epic definitely has the right and obligation to defend use of their trademark. If they don’t, they lose it. Ironically, the Cerner Parody EHR account (@CernerEhr) is a worse use of Cerner’s mark, but it’s still there. Too bad whoever is behind that account was just never as creative as the @EpicEMRParody account.
What’s even more interesting is that a year ago before the account was taken down, the @EpicEMRParody account had asked a really good question which could actually get some feedback for Epic. Here’s what they tweeted (thanks to the WayBackMachine):
So let’s assume real epic executives monitor this account closely. What could they do to make your life better at this time?
Maybe this is the tweet that got the attention of executives to get it taken down? I get that no company wants their dirty laundry aired in public. However, the responses were pretty fascinating to read. Here are a few of them and my brief commentary in brackets after:
Enable telemedicine on all of their accounts. [March 15th, this made a lot of sense as COVID was just hitting]
Integration with charts done in the prehospital setting. [I think this is possible]
Decrease clicksssss introduce keyboard shortcuts for everything [This one kind of annoys me since “clicks” isn’t the problem]
Moratorium on updates. Users have enough to deal with. [Remember this was at the start of COVID, but this is an interesting response given Judy’s recent comments about users using the software to its fullest which requires updating.]
More user customization and saving user specific setting. [This is why software is so hard. Some want more customization and some want less]
How can we place a banner across the first screen that a clinician sees, when they open the chart? I had an outpatient that I sent to an ER who was very imminently dangerous to others. Everyone needs that kind of info at once, and not have to click around to see it. [You have to be really careful with feedback that says “everyone”, but this is an interesting idea]
There’s a lot more. I find this all completely intriguing because of Epic’s choice to not really engage in public the way many companies do. Ok, they’ll never be the Wendy’s Twitter account, but their lack of PR and marketing efforts means that there’s a black hole of information that will suck anything into it that people can find. We see that in action on our site whenever we write about Epic.
Maybe it’s Judy’s genius marketing strategy after all. Actually, I don’t think that’s the case. I think that Judy is just so focused on her customers that she’s happy to talk and share with them, but she’s not really understood the value to Epic of being out there sharing and being part of the broader conversation. In fact, there’s likely some risk to doing so and it’s a bit scary when you haven’t been doing it before. However, even she has been out there more in the last few years more than she’d ever been before so maybe she’s coming around to it.
While there’s certainly some bad that can come from joining the outside conversation, there’s a lot of good that can come from it as well. Of course, given Epic’s success, they’ve proven that it’s not the only way to build a successful business. It’s just too bad their parody account is gone. We all need a good laugh once in a while. Especially during COVID.
Plus, it’s a fascinating question, “What Can Epic Do to Help?“
