Amazon Web Services has introduced an offering that uses machine learning to normalize big data aggregated from wide and varied sources across healthcare. It’s marketing the line to healthcare organizations that are awash in data but lack an efficient way to wring meaning from it.
Called Amazon HealthLake, the service automatically structures data in the FHIR standard (for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) and can be configured for HIPAA compliance, according to an announcement sent by Amazon.
Amazon says the service can help providers, payers, researchers, drug companies and others identify trends and unusual patterns in population-level health data. It works by enabling users to “store, tag, index, standardize, query and apply machine learning to analyze data at petabyte scale in the cloud.”
The announcement quotes executives from several major healthcare players already using Amazon HealthLake.
“[W]e are committed to transforming the future of healthcare through cloud delivery, machine learning and AI,” says Ryan Hamilton, a senior vice president at Cerner. The service has the potential, he adds, to “quickly ingest patient data from various diverse sources and transform the data to perform advanced analytics to unlock new insights and serve many of our initiatives across population health.”
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.