Google Cloud announced its Vertex AI Search for Healthcare platform is now available for general use while also rolling out new features for its Healthcare Data Engine.
The company initially expanded its artificial-intelligence-powered search capabilities back in March at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 2024 Global Conference and Exhibition.
The Vertex AI Search for Healthcare tool is designed to make it faster for healthcare professionals and other employees to find critical information within health records and medical documents. The technology enables medically tuned, gen AI searches on a broad spectrum of data including FHIR data and clinical notes, the company said.
Medical information is traditionally hard to search, given complex vocabulary and abbreviations. With this tool, those nuances are understood in one intelligent search, according to Google Cloud executives.
Vertex AI Search also integrates with Gemini 1.5 Flash and MedLM—Google's medical large language model—to generate answers to questions about the patient record, making the information easier to find and digest.
The search tool uses the organization's data to search, grounding gen AI outputs in these data to reduce the risks of hallucinations or inaccurate responses, executives said. It can cite and link to original, internal sources of the information, giving the user confidence in where information is coming from.
Electronic health record company Meditech integrated Google’s Vertex AI Search for Healthcare into its Expanse EHR.
“We're providing clinicians with an intuitive and efficient way to access the precise information they need, when they need it. This translates to reduced administrative burden, improved decision-making, and ultimately, better outcomes for patients,” Helen Waters, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Meditech, said in a statement. “Meditech is committed to empowering clinicians with cutting-edge tools that streamline their workflows and enhance patient care.”
One Meditech customer, Mile Bluff Medical Center, saves upward of 7.5 minutes of preparation time per patient, according to Waters.
Healthcare Data Engine enables an interoperable, longitudinal record of patient data and provides clinical insights in FHIR format.
"The administrative burden on healthcare workers is immense, taking precious time away from what matters most: patient care," said Lisa O'Malley, senior director, Cloud AI Applications, Google Cloud, in a statement. "With the general availability of Vertex AI Search for Healthcare and new features in Healthcare Data Engine, we're providing powerful tools for our customers to build a strong data foundation and harness the power of generative AI to create more efficient and effective healthcare systems."
Healthcare professionals are drowning in administrative work, with clinicians spending nearly 28 hours per week and medical office staff spending 34 hours per week on tasks like documentation, scheduling, billing and coding, and inventory management, according to a new report from Google Cloud and The Harris Poll.
Claims staff face a similar burden, dedicating 36 hours per week to administrative duties. This overload leads to burnout, with 82% of clinicians, 81% of medical staff and 77% of claims staff reporting feeling burnt out. Ultimately, this reduces valuable time spent with patients, impacting the quality of care, as 80% of providers acknowledge that administrative tasks take away from patient interaction.
Healthcare professionals are open to using gen AI, according to the survey, with 91% of providers and 97% of payers saying they feel positively about AI’s potential to ease administrative burdens.
"Healthcare workers have historically faced significant administrative burdens, and this has intensified in recent years due to increased regulatory requirements, complex billing processes, and associated EHR documentation requirements," said Aashima Gupta, global director of healthcare strategy and solutions at Google Cloud, in a statement. "But generative AI offers a powerful solution. By automating tasks and streamlining workflows, it supports healthcare experts, ultimately improving medical systems and helping doctors and nurses provide better care."
Hackensack Meridian Health started working with Google Cloud a year ago to explore using gen AI and developed a tool that helps employees with administrative tasks.
"We've seen firsthand how generative AI can significantly boost employee productivity. We built an AI-enabled chat tool, powered by Google's Gemini large language model (LLM), that helps with administrative tasks like summarizing meeting notes, drafting emails, preparing for conversations and summarizing articles and research," said Sameer Sethi, senior vice president and chief data and analytics officer at Hackensack Meridian Health. "This tool is already freeing up our team members to focus on what matters most: providing exceptional patient care."
HCA Healthcare developed a gen-AI-powered nurse handoff tool, created in partnership with front-line nurses.
"Our nurse handoff tool is transforming the way critical patient information is shared. By streamlining this traditionally tedious and manual process, we're not only improving efficiency and communication, but also ensuring that nurses have more time to connect with patients and provide truly personalized care,” said Michael J. Schlosser, M.D., senior vice president for care transformation and innovation at HCA Healthcare.
Some healthcare organizations are testing out ways to use gen AI For prior authorization and claims processing.
"Imagine: prior authorizations that take seconds instead of days, claims processing streamlined by intelligent automation, and clinicians freed from tedious administrative tasks to focus on what truly matters—patient care," said Tony Farah, M.D., chief medical and clinical transformation officer at Highmark Health.
Waystar also is working with Google Cloud to leverage gen AI in its healthcare system payments software platform.