Google’s search capabilities are everywhere. Now, Google Health, Alphabet’s health information products and services arm, aims to bring its search and summarization capabilities to the EHR world.
At the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition in Orlando on Tuesday, Google Health and EHR suppliers medical technology Announcing a collaboration they believe could provide providers with a more complete picture of their patients. Later, executives from both companies explained the rationale for the partnership in separate interviews.
The goal is to help clinicians provide the best possible care with quick and easy access to information across the care environment. That includes information beyond patient records, company officials said.
According to the company, Meditech solutions span all care settings from hospitals and outpatient clinics to home health and hospice, long-term care and behavioral health facilities. But there is still some patient data — from the tests they take to information about medical conditions — that could be excluded from patient records. And different providers may use different software and not have access to all the patient information they need due to incompatible systems. The collaboration aims to change that.
Meditech is exploring how to use Google Health’s search capabilities to bring together data from multiple patient records different care settings Help healthcare providers understand their patients more fully.
Christine Parent, vice president of marketing at Meditech, said in an interview, “In a meaningful way, it’s presented to clinicians when they need it, without gaps in care, so you can see The full story.” In HIMSS22.
“Not everyone is on the same system,” added Jason Patnode, the company’s marketing manager, who also participated in the interview.
That’s not always possible, he said.
According to the company, Google Health pulls information from different patient records to generate summaries of a patient’s health. Clinicians can then access in-depth critical information related to treating and monitoring a patient’s medical condition, including laboratory results, vital signs, and medication.
“Meditech is clearly leading the way when it comes to interoperability (and) helping clinicians have the best experience possible,” said Paul Muret, vice president and general manager of Google Healthcare Studio, who also detailed the companies’ plans to collaborate at HIMSS22 This includes “really streamlining the care process so clinicians can spend more time with patients and less time in front of the computer,” he said,
Care Studio’s technology is designed to make it easier for clinicians to find critical patient information.
Medical records have become so complex that simply aggregating more data won’t necessarily provide the clarity doctors need to improve patient care, Muret noted.
“How do we bring the power of Google — to organize and make information really accessible — into this picture? That’s where search comes in,” he said. “We have now unpacked and reorganized all the information across the system. Now we have a medically tuned search engine on top of that. ”
So if you want to know if a patient has ever taken medication before or know everything about their high blood pressure, this allows the healthcare provider to do that by searching the patient’s comprehensive medical record in the EHR.
Parent emphasized that Meditech has long considered patient longitudinal data—information collected over time and across care settings—to provide clinicians with a comprehensive view. She said the company’s planned partnership with Google Health will build on that, aimed at improving patient outcomes.
Both Meditech’s Expanse platform and Google Health’s clinical tools comply with privacy laws and are designed to meet industry best practices for protecting sensitive patient data, according to the companies.
Photo: Filograph, Getty Images
