NantHealth, a subsidiary of Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong's NantWorks, has received an unspecified equity investment from Verizon Communications, through the telecom's Verizon Investment arm. Verizon will help NantHealth develop a secure fiber-optic, cloud-based data infrastructure to deliver multimedia healthcare information to mobile devices, according to the companies.

"If we can stream a movie into a smartphone today, why can't we do an X-ray or CAT scan result?" Soon-Shiong said to the Los Angeles Business Journal.

This kind of content is supposed to help clinicians provide better care. "We believe that evidence-based medicine will be the cornerstone of future healthcare delivery," Soon-Shiong added in a joint press release. "Partnering with Verizon gives us the national scale to succeed in enhancing patient outcomes and better access to care through secure broadband networks and our mobile platform."

Soon-Shiong, who placed 47th on this year's Forbes 400 list of America's wealthiest people with an estimated net worth of $7.3 billion, also told the L.A. Business Journal that Verizon will help NantHealth develop "smart home" technology for remotely monitoring patients away from traditional healthcare settings.

Verizon and NantWorks already collaborate on the Cancer Knowledge Action Network, which provides clinicians with mobile access to cancer treatment protocols, and a supercomputing platform that reportedly can analyze a cancer patient's genomic data in less than a minute.

Earlier this year, another Soon-Shiong company, NantPharma, received a $125 million injection of capital from investment firm Blackstone.