More than a dozen major health systems, with millions of patients in 40 states, are banding together to launch Truveta, a new data-driven organization focused on collaborative approaches to precision medicine and population health. The goal is to innovate care delivery and spur development of new therapies by leveraging billions of clinical data points with a single search. Through automation technology, Truveta can deliver continuous learning to physicians, researchers, pharma developers and others. The 14 health systems participating in Truveta can offer a richer source of data from a wide geographic footprint in order to enable advancements such as development and integrity AI algorithms, since studies have shown that “under-developed and potentially biased models” can actually worsen care.
Given the expertise of technology companies in data, software, and AI, it is expected to see them eyeing healthcare as one of their most promising growth sectors. Their participation has included various initiatives and partnerships with healthcare entities. In December 2020, Google launched a new Android app — Google Health Studies — that streamlines study participation for consumers and provides transparency around how their data is being used for health research. Apple also has clinical research and data sharing capabilities on its iphone device.
Google recently launched its Healthcare Interoperability Readiness Program to help healthcare organizations understand the current status of their data and create a path to standardize and integrate across systems. In April 2020, Google opened up its Cloud Healthcare API to health systems and quickly signed on top medical centers such as Mayo Clinic.
Google is also working with EHR vendors, including Meditech, to take their systems and data to the cloud. One potential end goal of these partnerships could be a two-way data flow, where EHR vendors are incentivized to integrate patient-generated data into Google software.
The widespread adoption of mobile devices has placed Google and Apple at the center of the healthcare data ecosystem, offering previously unavailable real-time data while also gathering difficult-to-consolidate EHR information. The possibilities are seemingly endless when it comes to using AI and machine learning for early diagnosis, driving decisions in drug design, enrolling the right pool of patients for studies, and remotely monitoring patients’ progress throughout the study.
Google’s Verily has partnered with healthcare entities such as Stanford Medical Center and Duke University School of Medicine on Project Baseline. This project aims to map human health using data to accelerate finding treatments for more medical conditions. Part of Project Baseline’s aim is to better match patients with clinical research relevant to their issues.