DrFirst vs Epic Systems
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
E-prescribing, medication history, and patient safety platform processing hundreds of millions of Rx transactions annually. Rockville MD; founded 2000; embedded in hundreds of EHR and clinical workflow platforms;
About
DrFirst is a health IT company that has been at the forefront of e-prescribing and medication management since its founding in 2000. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, DrFirst provides e-prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS), medication history retrieval, clinical decision support, and patient medication adherence tools to hospitals, physician practices, long-term care facilities, and health IT vendors. The company processes hundreds of millions of prescription transactions annually and is embedded in a wide range of EHR and clinical workflow platforms through its APIs and SDK integrations.\n\nDrFirst's flagship EPCS solution was among the earliest to achieve DEA compliance for electronic prescribing of controlled substances, a capability that has become essential as regulatory requirements and clinical adoption have expanded across all states. The company's medication history service aggregates pharmacy and payer claims data to give providers a more complete view of a patient's actual medication use, supporting medication reconciliation at transitions of care and reducing adverse drug events. DrFirst also offers Backline, a secure clinical communication platform for care team messaging.\n\nDrFirst occupies a specialized but critical position in the health IT ecosystem, providing medication-related infrastructure that EHR vendors embed in their platforms rather than build independently. This embedded model gives DrFirst broad distribution across the provider market and creates sticky, long-term customer relationships. The company has invested in expanding its clinical intelligence capabilities, including AI-driven prior authorization for specialty medications and smart alerts that surface relevant clinical guidance at the point of prescribing.
Epic holds over 42% of U.S. acute care hospital EHR market share and is embedding AI across 150+ clinical workflows for 2026, while facing antitrust scrutiny.
About
Epic Systems Corporation was founded in 1979 by Judith Faulkner and is headquartered in Verona, Wisconsin, remaining privately held with Faulkner as majority owner. The company develops large-scale electronic health record systems and reports that more than 305 million patients have a record in Epic, covering the majority of U.S. academic medical centers and large health systems including Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Cleveland Clinic. Epic commands approximately 42% of U.S. acute care hospitals and nearly 55% of acute care hospital beds, making it the undisputed market leader in enterprise EHR.
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