Google Cloud has launched three new healthcare accelerators, partnering up with health systems, to address common use cases around health equity, patient flow and value-based care.
Google Cloud is collaborating with Hackensack Meridian Health, LifePoint Health and more for the Health Data Engine (HDA) accelerators. One of the main focuses of the accelerators is to improve interoperability. Currently, health information is often siloed and not easy to access through health system systems that do not communicate with each other.
According to Google Cloud, HDE will offer tailored infrastructure deployment configurations, BigQuery data models and Looker dashboard templates to support adoption and time-to-value of HDE for these common industry challenges. This will be available in 2023. The accelerators leverage Google Cloud’s infrastructure and data storage to support HIPAA compliance and protect patient information.
"These accelerators, developed collaboratively with healthcare organizations, will solve a range of industry pain points, and they will unlock the truly transformative power of interoperable longitudinal patient records," Aashima Gupta, global director of Google Cloud's Healthcare Strategy and Solutions, said in a statement. "The kind of transformation needed in healthcare can be daunting and slow, but an incremental, use case-based approach breaks apart these challenges into manageable solutions that capture specific business opportunities and drive innovation."
One HDE will focus on health equity and will provide tools to healthcare organizations to connect patients to community resources, support work with analytics and dashboards that will enable healthcare organizations to leverage social determinants of health (SDOH) datasets. The accelerator will include SDOH, along with Health Level Seven (HL7) and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) data for longitudinal patient records.
"These healthcare accelerators will be important tools for our scientists and innovators to reduce health disparities and inequity,” said Cris Ross, chief information officer at Mayo Clinic.
The patient flow accelerator will aim to improve efficiencies, including staffing shortages and employee burnout, by aggregating data and visualizations for health systems to understand patient flow metrics. Health organizations can then measure surface trends, potential drivers, and bottlenecks to help inform clinical operations performance initiatives.
"Promoting health equity and human dignity to improve the health of our communities is a fundamental priority for our network," said Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, and CEO for Hackensack Meridian Health. "This latest development from our partnership with Google Cloud will enable us to delve deeper into value-based care and accelerate the strides our research teams are making in these areas."
The value-based care accelerator will help organizations analyze trends and identify key population health metrics from combining claims and clinical data.
"Interoperability is at the heart of Highmark Health's Living Health strategy and we intend to leverage our blended structure of payor and provider to deliver a differentiated health experience for our patients and members," said Richard Clarke, chief data and analytics officer, Highmark Health. "Healthcare Data Engine is a central component to enabling that strategy and we are excited about the new accelerators being announced today as they will speed up time-to-value for our members."
Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."