Google's Cloud division announced it will soon introduce new capabilities for the health care and life sciences industries in its generative artificial intelligence-powered search engine Vertex AI Search.
The tech giant said the new search tool tuned for medical professionals allows access to a broad spectrum of data, including clinical sources and notes through the integration of Cloud's Healthcare API and Healthcare Data Engine, and will include Google Health's search and summarization capabilities.
Google says the new tools will assist physicians and other health care workers by allowing them the ability to quickly access clinical information and ask questions about a patient's medical records, which will help ease some of their administrative burdens.
"Bringing Google-quality, gen AI search capabilities across an organization's entire ecosystem, including EHRs [electronic health records], has the potential to dramatically improve efficiencies, provide clinical decision support, and increase the quality of care clinicians can give patients," said Burak Gokturk, VP and general manager, Cloud AI and Industry Solutions for Google Cloud.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?
The company said in a press release that the health care industry-focused features from Vertex AI Search "will help solve acute and growing problems of workforce shortages, provider burnout and administrative burden" in the industry.
Google pointed to data showing administrative costs in the industry jumped 30% last year alone, and are expected to reach $60 billion annually. The company also said the industry could face a projected shortage of 3.2 million front-line health care workers within the next five years, according to a labor market analysis by Mercer.
AI MAKING ADVANCEMENTS IN HEALTH CARE, HELPING TO PERFORM SURGERY
The company says Google Cloud customers retain control over their data, and the new Vertex AI Search features will support HIPAA compliance, as its Health Date Engine and Healthcare API support already do.
A number of high-profile customers touted the anticipated release of the new technology, including the Mayo Clinic.
"Health care is a data intensive industry with majority of the medical knowledge locked up in unstructured documents and text," said Vish Anantraman, chief technology officer for Mayo Clinic. "New search functionality from Vertex AI provides Mayo Clinic new capabilities to use data to support a wide range of applications."
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
Google Cloud said customers can sign up now for early access to the forthcoming health care-focused Vertex AI Search features, in order to try them out and share feedback.
