Highmark Health, in collaboration with Google Cloud, today announced its Living Health model and corresponding platform that aims to reshape how healthcare is delivered to be a more coordinated, personalized and technology-enabled experience.

Throughout the companies’ six-year strategic partnership, Highmark will support its Living Health model through the development of the Living Health Dynamic Platform, which will be built on Google Cloud.

Approximately 125 new jobs are being created at Highmark to support the development of the Living Health Dynamic Platform, the company said.

“This is a very exciting time because we’ve been working for the last couple of years to transform the health experience,” Karen Hanlon, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Highmark Health, told MobiHealthNews. “We’ve been doing it in an analog way, and now we’re going to be able to take the things we’ve been doing for the last couple of years and really do them in a much more scalable way.”

WHY IT MATTERS

The Living Health Dynamic Platform will encompass key features of Google Cloud including a secure and private infrastructure, machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, interoperability, and the Google Cloud Healthcare API.

With the platform, Highmark will support patients and clinicians to increase their engagement throughout the healthcare journey. It will supply timely data and actionable information to create a more proactive way to receive care.

“This is about improving health outcomes,” Hanlon said. “We believe that to improve health outcomes, we have to improve consumer engagement. We have to improve the flow of information between the clinician and the customer. We have to make the experience far more real-time and predictive than it is today.”

Specific outcomes that the platform could support include proactive intervention based on patient data, digital disease management, personalized health plans, and the centralized scheduling and management of care teams.

Highmark is still in the beginning stages of this partnership with Google Cloud, but it hopes to have a “minimally viable product” within the next year, Hanlon said.

THE LARGER TREND

As many healthcare organizations work to increase technology integration in their processes, tech companies are stepping up to offer solutions.

Google Cloud recently unveiled two artificial intelligence tools designed to help healthcare and life science organizations scan and analyze large volumes of unstructured text. Amazon released a similar tool in 2018 called Amazon Comprehend Medical.

Partnerships have become particularly popular, and this year Google Cloud teamed up with the Defense Innovation Unit to offer a prototypical artificial intelligence digital-pathology system that helps physicians improve the accuracy of cancer diagnoses.

It also teamed up with Amwell to integrate the Google Cloud AI technology with Amwell’s telehealth platform.

 ON THE RECORD

"This partnership represents a significant opportunity to improve healthcare experiences and outcomes for millions of people," said Andrew Moore, VP of industry solutions at Google Cloud, in a statement.

"The combination of Highmark Health's deep understanding of patient behavior and clinical best practices with Google Cloud's technology capabilities, including artificial intelligence and machine learning expertise, will accelerate access to the most cutting-edge tools for people to improve their health. We're excited to help bring Highmark Health's Living Health vision to life."