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Google Cloud is making its Vertex AI platform generally available, in addition to new features in its Healthcare Data Engine (HDE), the company announced in a press release this morning. The news highlights the cloud giant's latest efforts to innovate at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare.
Vertex AI has been around for a while, but the company has made a number of improvements and upgrades to the product to help healthcare professionals query medical records, collate insights across disparate sources, and more quickly and robustly. We've made it possible for you to participate in advanced analysis. The platform leverages an organization's own data to find and generate answers based on user queries. Additionally, we also cite the exact source of the answer so that users can refer to the primary documentation if needed.
Additionally, Vertex AI has integrated Gemini and MedLM. This is Google's unified set of foundational models built specifically for healthcare-generated AI applications. The company's creative work behind MedLM marks the industry's first foray into the world of healthcare-generated AI. A study published in the journal Nature describes how the work behind MedLM was involved in building the first LLM to earn passing scores on United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) style questions. I am. Since then, integrations across the ecosystem, including Vertex AI, have provided organizations across the country with a variety of ways to leverage generative AI applications to enhance clinical workflows.
Additionally, the company is making HDE available globally for greater interoperability and working with Vertex AI to enable organizations to glean deep insights from disparate data sources.
Lisa O'Malley, Google Cloud's senior director of cloud AI applications, told Forbes: “HDE's vision has always been to enable a world in which every healthcare provider has access to a complete and accurate view of their patient's health information. Where does that data reside? With HDE, healthcare organizations have access to a long-term record of interoperable patient data, providing clinical insights in FHIR format. ”
A study published today by the company between Google Cloud and The Harris Poll describes the important benefits that generative AI can potentially offer to reduce administrative burden in the healthcare sector. The report found that clinicians spend more than 28 hours a week on administrative and mechanical tasks, and nearly 80% of healthcare providers report that these tasks take time away from important patient care. And healthcare providers in general, they are very optimistic and welcome the introduction of AI as a tool that has the potential to alleviate these burdens.
O'Malley summarizes: “The administrative burden on health care workers is enormous, taking valuable time away from what matters most: caring for patients.” With the world at an all-time high, the industry cannot afford any more job cuts.
Aashima Gupta, global director of healthcare strategy and solutions at Google Cloud, remains optimistic, saying: “Healthcare professionals are stretched to the limit, so Vertex AI Search saves time by summarizing records and pinpointing exactly what clinicians need to know.” …us considers Gen AI-based search to be a great assistive technology to help doctors and nurses quickly find the information they need. ”
Nevertheless, Google Cloud is not alone in seeing the immense value that AI can add to this field. Just last week, Microsoft announced its own advancements in this space, introducing a number of new tools for healthcare organizations, including advanced medical imaging infrastructure models and new ways to build AI-powered assistants for healthcare professionals. did. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is also making great strides in this area. The company is collaborating with Radiology Partners, one of the largest imaging groups, to enable artificial intelligence use cases for medical imaging. AWS has also supported specialty areas in the life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors. In collaboration with Merck, the pharmaceutical giant was able to leverage cloud and AI tools to make drug discovery and clinical trial processes more efficient.
Undoubtedly, the rapid progress and progress in this field is promising. Research clearly shows that, if developed correctly, these tools can greatly benefit healthcare institutions and healthcare professionals alike. But for this to happen, competition in this space must not slow down. Rather, innovators must resolutely commit to higher standards to build an ecosystem that is not only efficient and affordable, but also ethical, responsible, and scalable over the long term.
