One of the nation’s largest EHR developers is planning to announce a new partnership with Amazon’s cloud computing platform.
The new partnership with Cerner is scheduled to be unveiled this week by Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy at the company’s annual conference, according to a report by CNBC, citing sources familiar with the matter.
In an email to FierceHealthcare, a Cerner spokesperson acknowledged that the company had seen the report, but declined to share any additional information or provide a comment.
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According to CNBC, the first stage of the partnership will focus on HealtheIntent, Cerner’s population health product aimed at leveraging analytics on large clinical data sets. The EHR vendor has already been utilizing AWS for networking and storage for HealtheIntent for some time, but the new partnership will reportedly allow providers to leverage the platform’s analytics and AI capabilities to predict outcomes for specific populations.
Although AWS already has partnerships with several healthcare companies, including another EHR vendor, Practice Fusion, industry analysts noted that nabbing Cerner as a client would raise the company’s healthcare profile.
The announcement comes at a time when many providers are moving to the cloud to boost interoperability and cut down on local data warehouses. The University of California recently announced plans to transition all five of its academic medical centers to the cloud, beginning with its San Diego campus. UCSD CIO Christopher Longhurst told FierceHealthcare that security and performance were among the key considerations driving that transition.