April 2026
There’s now an easier way to get summarized policy answers at Johns Hopkins Health System thanks to a new AI assistant on Hopkins Policies Online (HPO). HPO is a comprehensive information management tool for health system policies, procedures, and documents. HPO provides a centralized platform where employees can search and access policies relevant to their entity.
In the past, users looking for information entered keywords into search to identify a selection of policies relevant to their question. Because this system houses so many policies specific to multiple entities within Johns Hopkins Health System (over 40,000 policies, plus appendices), keyword searching could return many potential matches which the user would have to review. “It’s too hard to find the information I need” was the single most common complaint about the HPO experience.
Now, instead of searching for policies, users can ask HPO questions directly. The assistant provides detailed natural language answers, complete with citations to the policy sources. There is no need to know exactly which policy contains the information. Users just need to know what question they want to ask. The HPO interface also makes it easy to verify the responses are accurate and based on the correct policy sources. The new assistant handled over 900 queries in its first week.
The AI Assistant was developed by the Technology Acceleration Group. While HPO ensures consistency, accessibility, and efficiency in policy management, this new AI assistant takes the site to a higher level of usefulness and positive user experience.
