Artificial intelligence – or AI – is a popular buzzword right now. But what does it mean for the health care industry? While it may be too soon to tell the true impact AI will have on our world, including the health care industry, here are some of the recent announcements and things to keep an eye on in the health care space.
HCA Healthcare Using Generative AI
Healthcare Corporation of America (HCA), one of the largest health care organizations in the world, announced that it will be using generative AI to help improve its care delivery models. In the announcement, HCA notes that it started a pilot program earlier this year where roughly 75 emergency room physicians at four HCA hospitals started to use Google’s AI technology to quickly and easily document key medical information from conversations during patient visits. In the pilot program, physicians use an Augmedix app to create accurate and timely medical notes and the proprietary platform then leverages natural language processing and Google Cloud’s generative AI technology and speech-to-text processing to convert the data to medical notes, which the physicians then review and finalize prior to them being transferred into the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR).
Hackensack Meridian Health
Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH), the largest health system in the state of New Jersey, also announced an expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud to use generative AI solutions to not only improve patient care but also reduce the administrative burden on clinicians, caregivers, and hospital operators. Under their partnership, HMH and Google will use Ekam, HMH’s Cloud Data Platform built on Google Cloud, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, which supports HIPAA compliance. Through the partnership, HMH hopes to achieve greater administrative efficiencies, enhanced clinical decision-making support, and an equitable patient experience and improved health literacy.
Apollo Hospitals
In India, Apollo Hospitals announced its partnership with Google Cloud to improve access to health care throughout the country, even in rural areas. Apollo 24|7 will aim to deliver health care experiences to patients in India using telemedicine, online doctor consultations, home medication delivery, and more. Apollo 24|7 will use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and generative AI models.
Bayer
One of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies – Bayer – is also joining the AI train, entering into a partnership with Google Cloud to improve the clinical trial and drug discovery process using Google Cloud’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), a custom-developed application-specific integrated circuit to accelerate machine learning workloads. Bayer hopes that this technology will help to execute large quantum chemistry calculations.
iCAD, Inc.
iCAD, Inc., recently announced that it will amend its prior development and commercialization agreement with Google. This amendment will allow iCAD to integrate Google’s AI technology with its ProFound Breast Health Suite for 2D mammography for use worldwide, upon regulatory approval. This may be particularly helpful, as a study of six radiologists found that Google’s mammography AI system outperformed human readers.
Ginkgo Bioworks
Another recent partnership with Google Cloud is with Ginkgo Bioworks. Under the agreement, Gingko will make Google Cloud its primary computing services provider and Google Cloud will provide funding (an unspecified amount) to help the company “achieve certain milestones over the next three years,” including in the areas of large language models for biological engineering, generative AI enterprise search, and developing improved central data repositories.
Huma Therapeutics
Huma Therapeutics also recently announced use of Google Cloud’s generative AI to enhance the company’s regulated disease management platform to help health care professionals better optimize patient care delivery. Huma’s technology platform maintains a range of vital signs, biomarkers, and patient-reported data that are displayed on a health care provider dashboard, which allows providers to care for many more patients than they would be able to in-person, helping to alleviate workforce pressures and expand greater access to health care.
Meditech
Meditech also announced an amendment to its partnership with Google Cloud by which it will work to embed Google’s generative AI into its EHR for specific use cases, particularly cases where the company believes it has potential to alleviate physician burnout. One such use is by using Google’s large language models for search and summarizing EHR and data harmonization, allowing physicians quick access to a longitudinal view of their patient.
More on Artificial Intelligence
Google published an article on all of the partnerships and updates announced during its Google Cloud Next ’23, including some of the aforementioned partnerships. Additionally, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law held a hearing on legislative artificial intelligence in many capacities, including potentially health care. During NVIDIA’s Chief Scientist and Head of Research Bill Daly’s testimony in the hearing, he noted that already, the collaborations between health care industry and academic institutions has “led to large language models that can accurately predict a patient’s risk of 30-day readmission, among other clinical outcomes.” Daly went on to paint a potential future picture, imagining “a world where AI-driven chatbots assist healthcare providers, helping them ask the right follow-up questions and ensuring that every possible issue is considered and evaluated and that the treatment is the best possible, meets all patient needs, and is explained to the patient in a way they can understand.”