Hospital System Deploys Google AI Tool to Improve Healthcare Experiences

On Aug 29, 2023

Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) has expanded its strategic partnership with Google Cloud to deploy generative AI solutions to improve patient care and reduce the administrative burden on clinicians, caregivers, and hospital operators. The partnership will leverage Google Cloud’s generative AI technologies to develop and deploy solutions that will help HMH allow clinical staff to focus more on care, improve overall decision-making, and better personalize the patient experience.

Administrative costs in 2022 in the U.S. alone increased by $18 billion—30% in one year—to reach $60 billion annually (CAQH). At the same time, healthcare generates about 30% of the world’s data, and remains the fastest growing industry for data growth (Brunswick Group). It is no wonder that providers are increasingly turning to AI and machine learning to both reduce administrative burdens and unlock data for better patient care.

“Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize how we deliver care, making it more efficient, personalized, and effective,” said Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, CEO of HMH. “Artificial Intelligence coupled with experienced clinicians will be a game-changer for our nation’s healthcare system and potentially revolutionize how we deliver and receive care.”

Google Cloud and HMH are currently working together on a broad digital transformation initiative, including programs that leverage analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The companies’ generative AI work announced today will leverage Ekam, HMH’s Cloud Data Platform built on Google Cloud, and will use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, which supports HIPAA compliance. HMH has identified three focus areas where AI can deliver impact:

• Greater administrative efficiencies: The new generative AI tools can help the hospital system automate manual and repetitive tasks, alleviating employee burnout, allowing staff to focus on patients, and improving the overall patient experience.
• Enhanced clinical decision-making support: The AI tools can help HMH analyze large patient data sets and identify patterns and trends. These insights can be used to help providers make better decisions about patient care.
• Creating equitable patient experience and improving health literacy: HMH will build an AI-based solution for dynamic, real-time, tailored experiences and communication that account for unique patient contexts and enable equitable outcomes. In addition, HMH plans to fuel patient education by offering coherent, tailored explanations that simplify healthcare jargon and adjust for language translation to provide new ways to clarify and confirm understanding.

“AI is the most profound technology in the world today. Whether it’s helping doctors detect diseases earlier or enabling people to access information in their own language, AI is improving healthcare in remarkable ways,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO Google Cloud. “HMH is setting an example for the healthcare industry by using generative AI to help improve both the employee and patient experience.”

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