Highmark Health Builds on Google Cloud Partnership for Better Care

Source:-https://hitinfrastructure.com/

March 04, 2021 – Highmark Health and Verily recently announced a strategic collaboration with Verily that will build on its going partnership with Google Cloud to foster patient empowerment and digital transformation.

The latest strategic collaboration with Google Cloud’s sister company Verily will develop Highmark Health’s Living Health model, which is designed to deliver personalized healthcare to patients and allow clinicians to focus on the specific needs of each patient.

Additionally, the model seeks to eliminate the fragmentation in healthcare and re-engineers the healthcare delivery model to provide seamless, simpler, and smarter customer experience.

The Pennsylvania-based healthcare organization has already signed up for a six-year collaboration with Google Cloud to support the Living Health Model in December.

“We believe the collaboration with Verily and Google Cloud is the ideal trifecta of expertise that will enable us to create and deliver a remarkable health experience for patients through a holistic, digitally-enabled, personalized set of solutions, while also enabling clinicians, supported by a person’s health team, to focus on the specific needs of each patient and intervene at the right time to proactively prevent disease or its progression,” Karen Hanlon, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Highmark Health, said in the announcement.

Verily will provide digitally-enabled care solutions to manage chronic conditions, with potential focus areas including include congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Additionally, Verily will provide a clinical insights platform that will allow Highmark Health to use data to guide patients through personalized pathways for care.

Verily’s advanced analytics and Highmark Health’s clinical insights and expertise will be refined through a robust test-and-learn environment to build evidence and clinical validation for condition-specific solutions, Highmark Health said.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Highmark across Verily’s health platforms to serve the needs of both patients and clinicians. By providing actionable insights for patients and clinicians, the tools we build together will make the experience of health care more engaging and effective for all,” said Vivian Lee, MD, president of health platforms at Verily and chair of the board of Onduo, a subsidiary of Verily.

Verily and Onduo will collaborate with Google Cloud to integrate chronic disease solutions into Highmark’s Living Health model and the Living Health Dynamic Platform, which is currently being built on Google Cloud.

Overall, the Living Health model will enable clinicians to determine the appropriate next set of personalized actions for each patient. It will consider comorbidities, patient interests and goals, and more.

The chronic disease solutions will also extend care outside of the traditional clinical setting, which will integrate virtual care, digitally-enabled devices, and coaching to support patients in-between visits.

Built on top of Google Cloud’s secure, reliable infrastructure, privacy and security are a guiding principle of the Living Health model, Highmark Health explained. The company controls access and use of its patient data using rigorous, organizational privacy controls and governance.

“This partnership is truly symbiotic,” said Tony Farah, MD, executive vice president and chief medical and clinical transformation officer of Highmark Health.

“Together, we will drive transformational and more sustainable change, and we will do it faster than we could working separately. Together with Google Cloud and Verily’s consumer experience and technology, we will deliver the scale needed to provide more people and their health teams access to the most cutting edge digital and analytic tools to improve their health using a simplified and seamless approach,” Farah continued.