Epic integration connects your application, device or clinical system to an Epic EHR using FHIR R4, HL7 v2 interfaces, SMART on FHIR app launch or Epic Interconnect. A single read-only FHIR interface typically runs $15,000 to $30,000. A bidirectional Epic interface runs $30,000 to $80,000. A multi-resource integration with a Showroom listing runs $80,000 to $150,000. Marketplace and certification fees of $5,000 to $25,000 are paid to Epic separately.
Epic integration is where healthcare software projects are most often delayed, and the delay is rarely engineering. It is vendor review cycles, per-site activation and the discovery that a resource you assumed was available under FHIR R4 is served as STU3. Taction has completed 250+ healthcare and EHR integrations since 2013. This page sets out what the work involves, what it costs and how long it takes.
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We deliver Epic integration as fixed-scope engagements with a stated price and timeline rather than as open-ended consulting. Scope is set after a technical assessment, because an Epic estimate produced before anyone has seen your resource requirements and your target sites is a guess. A Business Associate Agreement is executed before any work touches an environment containing protected health information, and we manage the Epic-side legal and provisioning cycle as part of delivery rather than leaving it with your team.
A time-boxed review of your integration requirements, target resources, site footprint and approval path, delivered as a written architecture and cost plan you can use with or without us.
Resource handlers, authorization, error handling and reconciliation built against Epic’s sandbox and validated with production message samples before any site activation is requested.
ADT, ORU, SIU and DFT interface build with acknowledgement handling, retry logic and inspectable error queues. Usually the fastest route to live clinical data where events rather than queries are the requirement.
OAuth 2.0 scope design, launch context handling, session security and the clinician-facing behavior Epic reviews. Built to pass technical review the first time rather than after remediation.
Documentation, security questionnaire responses and technical review preparation for an Epic marketplace listing, managed as a workstream rather than treated as paperwork at the end of the build.
SLA-backed monitoring on throughput, error rates and Epic API version changes, handled by the engineers who built the interface. See our wider healthcare integration solutions.
Most organizations arrive with a clear picture of the data they need and no picture of the path to it. Epic exposes several integration surfaces, each with different capabilities, approval requirements and timelines, and the right one depends on whether you are reading or writing, whether you need real-time or batch, and whether your application must launch inside the clinician’s workspace. Choosing the wrong surface early is the most expensive mistake in an Epic project, because it is usually discovered after vendor review has already begun.
Pulling demographics, conditions, medications and observations out of Epic is substantially simpler than writing back into the chart. Write-back carries additional Epic review, additional validation and a materially different cost and timeline.
Event-driven interfaces that react to an admission or a result differ architecturally from scheduled bulk extracts. Volume, latency requirements and clinical urgency decide which pattern applies, and mixing them poorly creates reconciliation problems.
If clinicians must use your application without leaving Epic, you need SMART on FHIR launch rather than a standalone interface. This changes the approval path and adds requirements around context handling and session security.
An approved integration is not a live integration. Each Epic customer organization independently approves, configures and activates it, with site-specific testing at every one. This is where multi-site rollouts lose time.
Epic is only half the work. Your own data model, error handling, audit logging and reconciliation logic determine whether the integration is reliable, and that half is entirely within your control.
Many Epic integrations route through an engine rather than connecting directly, which centralizes transformation and monitoring. We frequently deliver this using Mirth Connect.
Epic’s integration surface has expanded considerably, and the naming is inconsistent enough that buyers routinely conflate distinct products. FHIR R4 APIs, HL7 v2 interfaces through Interconnect, SMART on FHIR app launch and Care Everywhere exchange all solve different problems and carry different approval requirements. A realistic Epic project usually uses more than one. The sections below describe each surface as it behaves in practice, including the places where documentation and production behavior diverge.
The primary modern surface, covering Patient, Observation, Condition, MedicationRequest, DocumentReference and a broad resource set. Coverage is strong but uneven, and some resources are still served under STU3 rather than R4.
ADT, ORM, ORU, SIU, MDM and DFT traffic remains the backbone of most provider-side integration. HL7 v2 is frequently the faster and cheaper path where real-time clinical events are what you actually need.
Launching your application in the Epic workspace with patient and user context passed through OAuth 2.0 scopes. The right choice when clinician adoption depends on not adding another login and another window.
Population-level extracts through the FHIR Bulk Data specification using backend service authorization. Suited to analytics, quality reporting and research rather than to point-of-care workflows.
C-CDA document exchange between organizations, distinct from API integration and governed by different agreements. Relevant when the requirement is record sharing rather than application connectivity.
Testing requires registration in Epic’s developer program and access to a sandbox environment. Provisioning sits on the critical path and should be started before engineering begins, not alongside it.
Epic’s marketplace, formerly App Orchard and now Showroom, is where third-party applications are listed for Epic customer organizations to discover and enable. The process is predictable but slow, and the most common planning error is treating it as a final step rather than a parallel workstream. Review typically takes two to four months, and per-site activation adds one to three months for each customer organization after that. A launch date that does not account for both numbers is not a launch date.
Not every integration needs one. Direct integrations for a single organization that already uses your product often proceed without a marketplace listing. Distributing to many Epic customers generally requires it.
Developer program registration, contractual agreements and fee structures come before technical review. Starting this early is the single cheapest way to protect a timeline.
Epic reviews architecture, authorization handling, data usage and security posture. Organizations with documented HIPAA controls and clean architecture pass more quickly, which is an argument for building compliance in from the start.
Budget $5,000 to $25,000 for marketplace and certification costs. These are paid to Epic and are separate from engineering cost, and we itemize them rather than absorbing them into a build estimate.
Each customer organization approves and configures your integration independently, with site-specific testing and a go-live approval. Multi-site rollouts should be sequenced deliberately rather than attempted simultaneously.
Epic API versions change and listings require ongoing conformance. This is a recurring obligation, not a one-off, and it belongs in your support budget.
Epic integration is priced by scope, not by hour. The cost drivers are whether the interface is read-only or bidirectional, how many FHIR resources or HL7 message types are in scope, whether a Showroom listing is required, and how many Epic customer sites you need to reach. Epic is generally the most expensive major EHR to integrate with, because the certification and review overhead is real. The figures below are engineering cost. Epic fees, infrastructure and third-party licensing are separate and itemized.
No write-back means no chart-level validation, a narrower review scope and considerably less clinical sign-off. It is the right starting point for most patient portals and telemedicine platforms.
Writing into the record introduces reconciliation, duplicate prevention, error recovery and clinical review requirements. The engineering is not twice as hard, but the validation genuinely is.
Each additional FHIR resource type adds handler development and testing. Defining the resource list precisely at scoping is what keeps an Epic estimate accurate through delivery.
Engineering cost is largely fixed across sites. Activation cost is not, because each site carries its own coordination, configuration and testing effort.
Epic API versions change and interfaces drift. Budget $3,000 to $15,000 per interface annually for monitoring, error resolution and version updates rather than discovering the need after an outage.
Our EHR integration calculator produces a calibrated estimate across Epic, Oracle Health, Athena and Allscripts in about a minute.
Epic marketplace fees, cloud infrastructure, third-party licensing and your own internal staffing are quoted separately from engineering effort and never absorbed silently into a build estimate.
Timelines on Epic projects are governed by review cycles rather than by engineering capacity, which is why adding developers rarely compresses them. A single well-defined HL7 interface can be built and tested in weeks. An application requiring a Showroom listing and activation across several customer organizations is a multi-quarter programme, most of it spent waiting rather than building. Planning against the review calendar rather than the development calendar is what separates a realistic launch date from an optimistic one.
Four to eight weeks from scoping to production for a well-documented interface against an organization that already has Epic connectivity established. The fastest route to live clinical data.
Four to eight weeks for read-only, longer for bidirectional. Sandbox provisioning and developer program access should already be in place before the clock starts.
Eight to sixteen weeks of development, then Epic technical review on top. Launch context and authorization behavior are where most review findings originate.
Two to four months for marketplace review, running in parallel with development where possible. This is the item most frequently omitted from project plans.
One to three months per customer organization after listing. Sequence sites by readiness and clinical risk rather than attempting a simultaneous rollout.
Starting program registration and sandbox provisioning early, defining resource scope precisely, and having documented security controls ready before review. Our delivery approach front-loads all three.
Epic integration widens the surface across which protected health information moves, and Epic’s own review will examine how you handle it. Our engagements run under a HIPAA-aligned development lifecycle with encryption, access control and audit logging treated as architectural inputs rather than pre-launch additions. Our information security management system is ISO 27001 certified. In practice, organizations that build compliance in from the start move through Epic review faster, because most review findings are architectural rather than cosmetic.
A Business Associate Agreement is executed before we touch an environment carrying patient data, including read-only assessments, and flowed down to every subprocessor involved in delivery.
Scope selection, token handling and refresh behavior designed to the minimum necessary standard. Over-requesting scopes is a common cause of review delay and an avoidable one.
Immutable logging of what was requested, by whom and when, retained so that a question raised months later is answerable without escalating to Epic.
Transport and storage encryption to your organizational standard, with data residency decisions documented for both your compliance team and Epic’s review.
We supply architecture documentation, control mapping and questionnaire responses as part of delivery rather than treating them as your team’s problem after handover.
The same documentation package supports payer and health system security assessments. More detail sits on our healthcare technology hub.
Epic projects fail on sequencing more often than on execution. Sandbox access gets requested after development begins, the Showroom review lands two months after the promised launch date, and nobody scoped per-site activation at all. Our process front-loads exactly those items. You will know your resource scope, your approval path and your riskiest assumption before we write production code, because those three things determine whether the timeline you were given is real.
We map your data requirements, target resources, site footprint and approval path, then identify the assumption most likely to break the timeline and test it first.
Developer program registration and sandbox access started immediately, in parallel with design, because provisioning delay is the most common avoidable cause of slippage.
Development against Epic’s sandbox with testing driven by real message samples rather than sanitized examples, and error paths exercised deliberately rather than assumed.
Documentation, security responses and technical materials assembled as a workstream, so submission happens when development completes rather than months afterward.
Sequenced activation with a rollback path at each site, monitoring configured before launch, and parallel running where clinical risk requires it.
Escalations handled by the engineers who built your interface, with no rediscovery period during an incident. Related work sits in our healthcare case studies.
A single read-only FHIR interface typically runs $15,000 to $30,000. A bidirectional interface runs $30,000 to $80,000. A multi-resource integration with a Showroom listing runs $80,000 to $150,000. Epic marketplace fees of $5,000 to $25,000 are separate.
A single HL7 or read-only FHIR interface typically takes four to eight weeks. Applications requiring a Showroom listing take four to nine months, driven mostly by Epic’s two to four month review cycle and one to three month per-site activation.
Not always. Direct integration for a single organization that already uses your product often proceeds without one. A listing is generally required when you intend to distribute your integration across multiple Epic customer organizations.
We are not a certified Epic partner and we say so directly rather than implying otherwise. We are an independent integration engineering firm that has completed 250+ healthcare and EHR integrations since 2013, including Epic FHIR and HL7 interface work.
Epic supports FHIR R4 across a broad resource set, though some resources are still served under STU3. Confirming which version applies to each resource you need is part of scoping, not something to discover during development.
Yes, subject to Epic approval and the organization’s own configuration. Write-back carries additional review, validation and clinical sign-off, which is reflected in both the cost band and the timeline.
Send us the data you need, whether you are reading or writing, how many Epic organizations you need to reach, and what is driving the deadline. You will speak with an integration engineer rather than a salesperson. If HL7 is a faster path to what you actually need than FHIR, we will tell you. We do not quote an Epic project before seeing the resource scope. Start through our contact form.
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