Big Tech player promises big interoperability via new data engine
A Silicon Valley icon has debuted a healthcare-specific data engine aimed at collating actionable information from data siloes operating within hospitals and health systems.
Google Cloud announced the development July 22.
Called Healthcare Data Engine, the software can help clinicians and other end-users pull patient data from far-flung sources—everything from medication orders and chart notes to insurance claims and clinical trials—to “process and visualize petabytes of their own patient data,” Google says in an announcement.
Such broad reach and longitudinal perspective “allows healthcare systems to take a more holistic view of patients in their surrounding communities and improve overall population health.”
Google says Indiana University Health is already using the engine and Mayo Clinic collaborated in fine-tuning its design.
Mayo’s vice chair of IT, Jim Buntrock, offers an example of the engine in action: building a “heads-up display” to prioritize bedside visits according to patients’ needs relative to one another.
Citing recent surveys showing pent-up demand for data interoperability among physicians, Google says the new data engine makes healthcare data more useful by providing clinical insights in FHIR format.
“This facilitates innovation and interoperability, helping healthcare and life sciences organizations make better real-time decisions—whether it is around resource utilization, optimizing clinical trials, accelerating research, identifying high-risk patients, reducing physician burn out or other critical needs,” Google says.
Google says Healthcare Data Engine is now available for private preview.
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.