Google Cloud, HCA Healthcare Agree To Partner On Data Analytics Platform

This week, HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud announced that they have teamed up to create a new analytics platform. The platform is intended to build on HCA’s long-term digital transformation strategy.

The provider already has data from 32 billion encounters available, which it uses to take steps such as developing algorithm-informed decision support tools for caregivers. Working together, the partners expect to develop a decision support tool.

HCA has already deployed 90,000 mobile devices running on its PatientKeeper and Mobile Heartbeat teams to help caregivers work more effectively.

Working with Google Cloud, HCA expects to support physicians, nurses and other mobile users with analysis and alerts sent to their mobile devices. These updates are needed to help clinicians respond quickly to changes in the patient’s condition.

The two will also focus on nonclinical support areas such as supply chain, human resources and physical plant operations that might benefit from better workflows developed through better use of data and insights.

To improve workflows, the partners will use Google Cloud’s healthcare data offerings. Including the Google Cloud Healthcare API and BigQuery, a database offering support for HL7v2 and FHIRv4 data standards.

This is just one of a handful of healthcare data management deals Google has executed in recent times. For example, in January Google Cloud agreed to a six-year deal with Highmark Health under which the two will build and manage a new platform designed to streamline patient care delivery.

Another example came in August of last year when Google Cloud invested $100 million in Amwell and set plans to greatly expand Amwell’s capacity to deliver specialized virtual care.

To me, it’s become increasingly clear that providers who want to succeed with next-gen digital care need a partner, not necessarily on the scale of Google Cloud, but more sophisticated at data management than what they have internally. That is where they should start, not finish.

Ultimately,  it seems likely that players the size of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon will be needed to create the backbone of a new virtual care system. Even large hospital chains don’t have the reach that Google does, and that’s going to matter a lot in the days to come. Now is the time to pick which tech titan can get your digital care job done right.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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