Healthcare has lagged behind other industries in technology adoption, but AI is different. Generation AI (GEN AI) can improve many of the administrative burdens of healthcare, such as finding appropriate information in medical records, drafting documents, and identifying candidates for clinical trials. It also promotes new opportunities for healthcare transformation as Gen AI continues to evolve from buzzwords to new advancements such as business agents, AI-powered search and AI platforms.
At this week's HIMSS 25 Healthcare Conference, we shared how healthcare providers can use Google Cloud's Gen AI to build agents and search tools that can reduce the administrative burden of doctors and nurses and provide better care.
Healthcare AI Agent
AI agents are sophisticated technology designed to autonomously perform tasks, often mimicking human cognitive abilities. In healthcare, these agents can take on a variety of roles, from scheduling appointments to analyzing medical images. While still in its early stages, researchers are investigating AI agents for a variety of uses, including personalized medicine, remote patient surveillance, drug discovery and development.
Basalt Health today announced that it will launch an advanced AI agent to support medical assistants (MAS). These agents help MAS prepare patient charts and perform administrative tasks to prepare for future patient visits. These agents can also help identify gaps in care and potential health risks, such as flagging important screenings for mammograms and colonoscopy. Basalt agents understand subtle medical guidance, integrate information from both structured and unstructured patient data, and interpret complex management workflows. Basalt's AI agents use Vertex AI, Gemini and other Google Cloud technologies to operate within a secure Google Cloud environment, providing high accuracy and reliability. Key aspects of its development include maintaining ethical standards, ensuring transparency, and addressing concerns such as data privacy and algorithm bias.
Google Agentspace allows organizations to easily build AI agents using Gemini's advanced inference, Google quality search, and enterprise data. Provide your organization with the tools and infrastructure needed to connect agents to data sources, define workflows, and manage performance.
Search with Gen AI
The healthcare industry generates a huge amount of data. Despite all the data, it's still difficult for healthcare workers to find what they need, so we often say that the industry is data-rich and information-rich. AI-powered search tools use natural language processing and machine learning to go beyond traditional keyword searches to understand the context and intent behind search queries. This allows organizations to provide people with the most relevant and accurate information, even when buried deep within a vast database.
In HIMSS, several organizations used healthcare searches using apex AI searches to provide clinicians with access to important information and contributed to improving patient outcomes.
FREENOME: Identify candidates for cancer screening
Biotech Company Freenome is working with Google Cloud to improve colorectal cancer screening rates. Freenome is developing blood tests for early CRC detection and uses Google Cloud's AI tools to identify patients who prioritize screening. By analyzing identified patient data, including health risk factors, demographics, and social determinants, Freenome can identify people who may have been overlooked in standard screening procedures. Freenome uses a variety of other Google Cloud services, including Computing Engine, BigQuery, Looker, and more for data analysis, model training and visualization.
Counterpart health: Previous identification and management of disease
Counterpart Health, a subsidiary of Clover Health, has announced that it will use vertex AI search in its corresponding assistant software to enable a generative AI search experience across a patient's digital health record with Point of Care. This allows clinicians to quickly access key insights synthesized from over 100 integrated data sources, including recent testing, hospital drainage, and medication adherence.
Meditech: Help clinicians find what they need
Meditech has integrated AI-powered search and summary directly into Expanse, an electronic health record system. This allows clinicians to receive all the summary views of relevant patient records, lab results, and previous notes within familiar workflows. This saves time and helps clinicians make more informed decisions.
Suki: Amvient AI with search
Suki has announced how AI assistants can use natural language to ask questions such as, “What are the latest recommendations on when a patient should start screening for colorectal cancer if he has a significant family history?” Receive a concise, AI-generated answer. These new features are built with healthcare vertex AI search, making Suki one of the industry's first end-to-end clinical assistants, providing support for a wide range of tasks including surrounding documents, coding suggestions, patient record summary, medical reference answers and more.
Join Himss Booth #673's Google Cloud to see all of these exciting new technologies working. You can also read more about the news in the Google Cloud press section.
