- Healthcare Execs Say Cloud Computing, Other Tech Speeding Innovation
- Healthcare Organizations’ IT Strategy to Include Hybrid, Multicloud
The alliance will enable data-driven clinical and operational decision making by using Azure and interoperability standards like HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to integrate siloed data sources in a secure cloud environment. FHIR uses existing logical and theoretical models to provide a consistent and rigorous mechanism for exchanging data between healthcare applications.
The alliance will begin implementation of the cloud-based health IT at a Providence St. Joseph Health-affiliated hospital in Seattle, near Microsoft’s headquarters. The goal is to scale this implementation across the entire health system.
Providence St. Joseph Health employs 119,000 personnel serving in 51 hospitals, 829 clinics, and a range of health and social services across Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
“Providence St. Joseph Health has been on a journey to transform healthcare and achieve a vision of health for a better world. We’re excited to accelerate that journey by collaborating with Microsoft. Together, we’ll support doctors, nurses and all caregivers by equipping them with innovative tools and technology that make it easier to do the vitally important work of improving lives,” said Rod Hochman, M.D., president and CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella added: “Our alliance with Providence St. Joseph Health brings together the expertise of one of the largest and most comprehensive health systems in the country with the power of Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. Our ambition is to accelerate Providence St. Joseph Health’s digital transformation and to build new innovations together that are designed to improve health care delivery and outcomes.”
More Healthcare Organizations Embrace Cloud Computing
More healthcare organizations are dropping their initial resistance and embracing the cloud.
For example, Rush Medical Center announced last month that it was moving to Google Cloud to uncover insights from unstructured data to improve patient care.
Rush partnered with Maven Wave and Google to map unstructured data in Rush's electronic health record system to SNOMED CT, a suite of standards for use in the electronic exchange of clinical health data.
“One of our main directives here at Rush is to find innovative ways of administering healthcare so that costs decrease and outcomes improve for our patients,” said Shafiq Rab, senior vice president and chief information officer at Rush University Medical Center and the Rush System for Health. The health system has three hospitals, more than 30 outpatient clinics, and more than 900 providers.
“To achieve that goal, the most important piece of the puzzle is information. This partnership with Maven Wave and Google Cloud allows us to develop that deep, actionable insight and provide the right information to the right person at every turn,” Rab added.
Rush formed the partnership to take advantage of natural language processing, machine learning, and other technologies to administer cancer screenings for early detection, ensure pre-surgical physicals are performed, and improve clinical documentation.
In addition, UCLA Health announced in May a partnership with Microsoft Azure cloud services to use healthcare data for medical research and precision medicine.
“The integration of information from structured data, like lab results and medication information, with unstructured data, like documentation, genomics and medical images, creates an incredibly powerful big-data learning platform for discovery,” said Michael Pfeffer, M.D., assistant vice chancellor and chief information officer for UCLA Health Sciences.
The Azure cloud tools use AI and machine learning to sift through and process large volumes of data and identify data patterns. Azure will also enable the health system to employ predictive analytics to improve disease prevention.
