Health IT company Redox is teaming up with Google Cloud to simplify the exchange of healthcare data for health plans, providers and digital health startups.
Redox is an electronic health record integration company that provides a platform for payers, providers and products to connect to health records systems and other healthcare data sources. It provides a single, secure API endpoint that connects and integrates provider EHRs with healthcare products and services.
As a part of the partnership, Redox will replicate its platform on Google Cloud. By easily onboarding health data from legacy systems into Google Cloud products like Healthcare Data Engine and Healthcare API, organizations can build longitudinal views to better serve their patients and members, according to Redox executives.
With access to an interoperable, longitudinal record of patient data through Google Cloud, organizations can make better real-time decisions in areas like population health, clinical trials and research acceleration, and disease detection and prevention, executives said.
"When we first collaborated with Redox and saw how fast we could help a healthcare organization further accelerate data interoperability, we had an 'aha' moment," said Chris Sakalosky, vice president for strategic industries at Google Cloud, in a statement. "With this partnership, we continue to help organizations across the healthcare spectrum tackle the most complex data harmonization challenges, unlocking insights and improving outcomes."
The information healthcare organizations need is often siloed across multiple IT systems and facilities. It's also difficult to access, often taking years to exact and normalize as it may be buried deep in the patient record or spread across disparate databases, according to Google Cloud and Redox executives.
In order to take advantage of Google Cloud’s clinical data repository and healthcare and life sciences tools, clinical data from EHRs must be ingested in HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), the modern healthcare interoperability standard. Many healthcare organizations and health plans manage data from multiple EHRs and could have hundreds of additional data sources that they need to consolidate and transform from legacy standards like HL7v2, CDA, X12, and/or DICOM into FHIR to enable a longitudinal view of their patients and members.
Executives say the partnership enables providers and health plans to maximize the use of their legacy system data in a single cloud database up to 80% faster than other solutions.
Redox Healthcare Integration, which is now available on Google Cloud Marketplace, helps unlock these data at scale, executives said. The company says it has facilitated more than 5,000 integrations between health tech vendors, EHRs and health systems.
There is a growing body of regulatory requirements in the U.S. that reinforce the interoperability of patient data as a priority for providers and health plans. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Cures Act Final Rule requires that patients have secure access to their electronic health information to use and share, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Interoperability and Patient Access Rule requires that health plans participating in federal exchanges share claims data with patients electronically.
"Healthcare organizations are transforming using new applications and analytics tools driven by cloud technology. Redox was designed to support these new tools with enterprise-scale data exchange with hospitals, clinics, health plans, Healthcare Information Exchanges, networks and other sources that provide the foundation of healthcare data," Redox CEO Luke Bonney said.
Google is competing against Microsoft and Amazon Web Services to become the go-to cloud and analytics partner of the healthcare industry. The tech giant has inked deals with Northwell Health and HCA Healthcare for cloud, AI and data analytics capabilities.
The tech company has been supporting Mayo Clinic’s digital innovation efforts since 2019 and two years ago positioned itself as the linchpin of Highmark Health’s new Living Health delivery model.