Healthcare Heroes—Judy Faulkner/EPIC

When I think about transformative leaders in healthcare technology, one name stands above the rest: Judy Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic Systems.

In 1979, Faulkner started coding in her Wisconsin basement with $70,000 borrowed from friends and family, a single minicomputer the size of a washer-dryer, and two part-time assistants. She wrote the original code herself. Today, Epic maintains the medical records of over 325 million patients—more than half the U.S. population—and serves the most prestigious healthcare institutions in the world, including Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Cleveland Clinic.

What makes Faulkner's story remarkable isn't just the scale of her success (though $5.9 billion in revenues (2025) and 38% market share certainly qualify). It's how she built it.

Faulkner has famously said "no" to everything Silicon Valley holds sacred. No venture capital. No acquisitions. No IPO. When her co-founder pushed for VC funding to accelerate growth, she simply replied: "No, we're not going to do that. Because we'll lose control." He later admitted, "I was wrong. She was right."

She calls going public "the tyranny of the quarter," rejecting the idea that shareholder returns should trump patient care. After researching public companies, she found shareholder comments "vitriolic" because "the only thing they were looking at was return on their investment. Sometimes, there's a lot more than that."

At 82, Faulkner still works daily, with no retirement plans. "I enjoy what I do," she says, "and I'd like to do it as long as I am effective and can bring value to the job." Her stated goal remains beautifully simple: "To have the best EHR in the world" where "ease of use for doctors is critical" so that "'Best Care for my Patient' gets out."

Employees describe her as "brilliant" and "modest," with "this knack of leading us in the right direction." She's legendarily detail-oriented—when Epic's first campus was built with over 80 bathrooms, she personally reviewed specifications for all 85: light fixtures, faucets, mirrors, wallpaper, tile, sinks.

But perhaps most inspiring is her commitment to giving back. In 2015, Faulkner signed The Giving Pledge, committing 99% of her wealth to philanthropy. Through her Roots & Wings Foundation, she supports low-income children and families, ensuring they have "roots—food, warmth, shelter, healthcare, education—so they too can have wings."

Faulkner proves that you can revolutionize an industry, build a multi-billion dollar company, and stay true to your values—all while keeping the patient at the center of everything you do.

That's a healthcare hero, and she’s one of mine.

About David Brake

DAVID is the Co-founder and CEO of OPTICS for Healthcare, an AI-first company dedicated to creating safer healthcare environments for staff, patients, and the public. The OPTICS platform was designed to revolutionize how healthcare organizations approach facility assessments, enabling them to conduct comprehensive current-state evaluations, generate detailed gap analyses, and develop customized workplace violence policies and action-specific operational playbooks.