Google Strikes Deal With Hospital Chain to Develop Healthcare Algorithms -- Update
May 26 2021 - 10:18AM
Dow Jones News
By Melanie Evans
Alphabet Inc.'s Google and national hospital chain HCA
Healthcare Inc. have struck a deal to develop healthcare algorithms
using patient records, the latest foray by a tech giant into the $3
trillion healthcare sector.
Nashville, Tenn.,-based HCA, which operates across about 2,000
locations in 21 states, would consolidate and store with Google
data from digital health records and internet-connected medical
devices under the multiyear agreement. Google and HCA engineers
will work to develop algorithms to help improve operating
efficiency, monitor patients and guide doctors' decisions,
according to the companies.
"Data are spun off of every patient in real time," said Dr.
Jonathan Perlin, HCA's chief medical officer. "Part of what we're
building is a central nervous system to help interpret the various
signals."
The deal expands Google's reach in healthcare, where the recent
shift to digital records has created an explosion of data and a new
market for technology giants and startups. Data crunching offers
the opportunity to develop new treatments and improve patient
safety, but algorithm-development deals between hospitals and tech
companies have also raised privacy alarms.
Google has previously reached deals with other prominent U.S.
hospital systems, including St. Louis-based Ascension, that granted
access to personal patient information, drawing public scrutiny.
Other tech giants have struck similar deals.
Dr. Perlin said HCA patient records would be stripped of
identifying information before being shared with Google data
scientists and that the hospital system would control access to the
data. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed by the companies.
Google will access data when needed with consent from HCA, but
the tech giant can develop analytic tools without patient records
and allow HCA to test the models independently, said Chris
Sakalosky, managing director of healthcare and life sciences at
Google Cloud. "We want to push the boundaries of what the clinician
can do in real time with data, " he said.
Personal patient information is protected under the federal
health-privacy law, known as the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act. The law allows hospitals and some other
healthcare companies, such as health insurers, to share information
with contractors, which must also abide by the law's privacy
protections.
Some consider the federal law outdated, saying the law's
protections haven't kept pace with the technology sector's growing
demand for patient data, said Michelle Mello, a Stanford University
professor of law and medicine who focuses on health-data
privacy.
Companies may also use the data under the law in ways to develop
products that boost corporate profit, with no visibility or control
for patients over how their data is used. "Some people just don't
want their data used in particular ways by particular parties,"
said Dr. Mello, who has served as an adviser to Alphabet's Verily
Life Sciences.
Health and technology giants have pushed into healthcare data
aggregation and algorithm development with mixed results.
International Business Machines Corp. has explored a sale of its
IBM Watson Health business, as the company's healthcare
artificial-intelligence unit struggled, The Wall Street Journal
reported in February.
Hospitals are uniquely positioned as brokers for data created by
patients seeking care and interacting with doctors, laboratories,
pharmacies and medical devices. They have increasingly sought to
capitalize on that data in deals to aggregate patient records or
develop products with pharmaceutical and technology companies.
"They aren't sleeping on this opportunity either," said Jeffrey
Becker, principal analyst for healthcare at CB Insights.
Fourteen hospital systems in February announced a newly formed
company, Truveta Inc., to sell access to their anonymized records
for patients across 40 states. Other hospitals have invested in
health-record analytic companies, such as Health Catalyst Inc.,
which went public in 2019.
The multiyear HCA-Google agreement will seek to develop
algorithms using data from 32 million annual patient visits that
could help monitor patients and guide treatment, said Dr. Perlin.
During the pandemic, HCA used its own technology to monitor
critically ill Covid-19 patients and notify doctors of potentially
better treatment options. The company found that survival rates
increased by comparing the outcomes for patients before and after
rolling out the algorithm.
The companies will also seek to develop algorithms that would
help improve operations, Dr. Perlin said, such as by automating how
hospital units track inventory of critical supplies.
Write to Melanie Evans at Melanie.Evans@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 26, 2021 10:11 ET (14:11 GMT)
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