Patients call a hospital to move an appointment, refill a prescription or ask about a bill. At MUSC Health, those calls frustrated patients and strained staff.

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The Medical University of South Carolina’s health system now sends them first to Emily, an artificial intelligence (AI) agent built on SoundHound AI’s platform. Emily has supported more than 2.2 million patient calls since MUSC Health deployed it in 2024, SoundHound said in a July announcement. That month, MUSC Health added its retail and specialty pharmacy phone lines. Patients can ask Emily to request a prescription refill, check a refill’s status or find pharmacy hours and locations.

Before Emily, the call center was open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the system wanted 24-hour support, Crystal Broj, chief digital transformation officer at MUSC Health, told HealthTech magazine in August. She cited “patient frustration, workforce pressure” and a need to modernize. Emily is integrated with MUSC Health’s Epic electronic health record, so a changed appointment updates the patient’s record automatically, the magazine reported.

Emily started with two tasks and now answers all 92 of MUSC Health’s patient access phone lines, according to HealthTech Hot Spot. The first tasks were confirming and canceling appointments, Broj said in a March interview with HealthTech HotSpot at the HIMSS conference. Rescheduling came next, then Spanish-language calls.

Emily now handles 25% of MUSC Health’s patient calls, Broj told Chief Healthcare Executive in June.

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