The pandemic has led to a “complete transformation” in how many healthcare organizations operate due to the industry’s ongoing digital transformation, according to Thomas Kurian the CEO of Google Cloud.

Kurian joined HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf today in a HIMSS21 Global Conference Digital Session where the two looked back on the last 18 months and offered insights into what the future of health technology might look like.

“Technology has been one of the things that has been transformed by this COVID pandemic, and some of it will be lasting and some of it, you know, may go back to a different model once the pandemic goes away, hopefully,” Kurian said during the session.

When it comes to technology’s biggest areas for potential impact, Kurian gives three examples.

The first being its ability to enable continuous care. This will allow providers to offer better care when they’re connected with their patients both in and out of the hospital. He says consumer wearables like Fitbits can give clinicians valuable insights into a patient’s health.

The next area of opportunity lies in clinical decision support. Using real-world data paired with insights gathered by artificial intelligence has been shown to assist in healthcare from radiation therapy to cancer care, Kurian said.

Thirdly, he says that technology has the potential to make healthcare all-around more productive.

“The more efficient you can make the healthcare system, the more that healthcare system can invest back in patient care, new forms of treatment, new forms of drug discovery, et cetera.”

Kurian and his team at Google are working to give consumers and providers access to technology tools that can help realize healthcare’s fullest potential.

 “Whether that’s the work that our Google Health team is doing with Search to improve the way that people can find authoritative sources for information or the YouTube team and the work they’re doing to distribute information about different kinds of disease to people,” he said.

The company is also using tech to address gaps in the nation’s public health infrastructure. For example, it’s working on creating what Kurian calls a “longitudinal patient record” that unifies information from electronic health records, clinical trials, genetics and other sources so providers can get a better view at the whole scope of a patient.

“Our view is that unlocking the value from data is the next, you know, boundary in improving healthcare,” he said.

Once this data is compiled in one place, it can be analyzed using machine learning to create new pathways of care that will ultimately lead to better access to care and a more equitable system, according to Kurian. 

At the end of the day, however, the role of technology in healthcare is simple: to assist providers.

“Technology to us will always be an enabler to the doctors, the nurses, the people in the pharmaceutical companies looking for care,” Kurian said. “And they’re all our heroes through this pandemic and our technology is just seen as servicing it, providing them more tools and capabilities.”