Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey’s largest health system announced an expansion of 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 Hackensack Meridian Health allow clinical staff to focus more on care, improve overall decision-making, and better personalize the patient experience.
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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 Hackensack Meridian Health. “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 Hackensack Meridian Health 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 Hackensack Meridian Health 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: Hackensack Meridian Health 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, Hackensack Meridian Health 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. “Hackensack Meridian Health 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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Google Cloud’s approach to data governance and privacy policies ensures its customers retain control over their data. In healthcare settings, access and use of patient data is appropriately protected through the implementation of Google Cloud’s reliable infrastructure and secure data storage that support HIPAA compliance, along with each customer’s security, privacy controls, and processes. Google Cloud’s responsible approach to generative AI also means customers have access to tools to directly tune large language models and to review model responses for biased or unvalidated content, teaching the model to avoid inappropriate outputs.
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