By GREGORY ZELLER //
A high-caliber partnership between New York’s largest healthcare provider and the planet’s preeminent search engine will advance clinician care, patient experiences and other critical healthcare avenues.
That’s the word from New Hyde Park-based Northwell Health, the state’s largest provider by number of physicians and number of patients, and California-based Google Cloud, the Internet-search king’s core infrastructure for security, data analytics and machine learning. The two titans are now sharing a “digital transformation journey,” Northwell said Wednesday, with new levels of forward-thinking and personalized healthcare in the offing.
In a nutshell, Northwell will incorporate Google’s cloud and AI abilities into various healthcare protocols, looking to create more proactive and intuitive processes.
The health system framed the collaboration as “paramount” in its effort “to transform digital and connected experiences,” while Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling took it a step further, calling the digital transformation “critical to our long-term goals of further advancing clinical excellence.”
Joe Miles: Smooth operator.
“This new strategic alliance will help us deliver personalized experiences by safely and privately harnessing customers’ data to enhance care, wellbeing and equity in care for our patients,” Dowling said Wednesday.
On the drawing board are enhanced digital scheduling, automated payment interactions and more intelligent and accessible medical summaries. Northwell also plans to leverage Google Cloud’s AI expertise to create new “predictive insights” that benefit planning and scheduling – and could even identify “risk indicators” that trigger earlier interventions.
As part of the agreement, Northwell will select Google Cloud as its preferred cloud platform on all infrastructure-modernization projects and use Google’s remote operating systems as the basis of an “interoperable data platform” with AI and machine-learning capabilities.
Often-sensitive patient data will sometimes, unavoidably, be part of the mix – but the collaboration will also prioritize patient privacy, combining Google Cloud’s hardened infrastructure with Northwell’s existing privacy controls to ensure data security.
Joe Miles, Google Cloud’s managing director of Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Solutions, said the collaboration would go a long way toward bringing Northwell’s patient- and provider-facing data services to the cutting edge of modern functionality.
“People want the same kind of seamless experiences and access to their healthcare that they have in other areas of their life,” Miles said in a statement. “Healthcare providers need to meet these demands while also running the organization more efficiently.
“Northwell Health is taking the lead on innovation and interoperability to transform health and wellness for millions of New Yorkers.”
