Humana inked a new multiyear agreement with Google Cloud to modernize its cloud infrastructure and build out generative AI solutions.
The two companies tout the potential to use advanced technologies to reduce costs and improve the member experience.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The agreement builds on an ongoing collaboration between the two companies to co-develop solutions focused on population health and advance the use of AI technologies and product for Humana members and patients, the organizations said.
Google Cloud and Humana are also exploring potential opportunities to develop new solutions for members.
The companies didn't offer specifics on the type of solutions they would work on together.
Jim Rechtin, Humana's CEO, said the health insurer planned to use Google Cloud's capabilities to "make it easier for our members and patients to have affordable access to the right care at the right time."
He cited the potential to use cloud and AI technologies to make its contact centers more responsive and its provider networks easier to navigate. The use of the technologies also could help make healthcare coverage easier to understand and primary care better tailored to individual needs, Rechtin said in a press release.
"By combining Humana's deep understanding of healthcare with Google Cloud's cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies, Humana can unlock new possibilities for operational efficiency, clinical insights, and personalized care,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, in a statement. “This collaboration will empower Humana to further improve the well-being of their members and transform the delivery of healthcare."
Generative AI continues to be a big buzzword in 2024 as tech companies see the potential to use the technology to increase efficiency, offer a better consumer experience and alleviate administrative burden.
Google is using its tech muscle to build out generative AI and cloud capabilities for healthcare and life sciences companies and has made big strides in developing medically tuned large language models (LLMs). It rolled out Med-PaLM, an LLM designed to provide answers to medical questions, in 2022. In December, the tech giant unveiled MedLM, a family of foundation models designed for healthcare industry use cases and available through Google Cloud.
Googel Health also is fine-tuning its Gemini model for the medical domain, building a personal health LLM that can power personalized health and wellness features in the Fitbit mobile app, developing AI models to help with early disease detection and researching ways generative AI can assist with medical reasoning and clinical conversations, executives said in March.
Humana emphasized that it is committed to the ethical use of AI and using technology to improve patient experiences, quality of care and health outcomes. The company has a policy of maintaining a human-in-the-loop whenever AI is utilized in cases of clinical decision-making, executives said.
Google Cloud’s customers retain control over their data. In healthcare settings, access and use of patient data is protected through the implementation of Google Cloud’s infrastructure and data storage that support the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act compliance, along with each customer’s security, privacy controls, and processes, the company said.