Doctors will be able to access the information by asking tool-specific questions instead of going through notes and electronic health records.
Google Cloud has announced that it has added new AI-powered search capabilities aimed at helping clinicians access accurate information across various types of medical records.
While the healthcare industry has a wealth of valuable and potentially useful information, clinicians are sometimes faced with the challenge of lack of access as it is stored in different formats across multiple systems. Google Cloud’s latest search tool seeks to remedy this by allowing healthcare workers to access clinical notes, scanned documents, and electronic health records all in one place. The new capabilities build on Google’s existing Healthcare API and Healthcare Data Engine products.
The company believes that the tool will save clinicians a great amount of time and energy. Speaking to CNBC, senior director of product management for Cloud AI at Google Cloud, Lisa O’Malley said:
“While it should save time to be able to do that search, it should also prevent frustration on behalf of clinicians and [make] sure that they get to an answer easier.”
Doctors will be able to access all the information they need on a patient by asking tool-specific questions instead of going through notes and electronic health records. The tool can also be used to make sure that the correct billing codes are applied and to determine whether patients meet the requirements to join a clinical trial.
To create trust and dispel concerns that the technology might be generating inaccurate responses, the search tool will cite and provide links to the original source of information from within the organization’s internal data.
A 2016 study funded by the American Medical Association found that physicians spent an average of two hours on administrative work for every hour spent with a patient. This, coupled with working in understaffed facilities, has been a cause of burnout for many clinicians. The number of physicians reporting feeling burned out increased from 42% in 2018 to 53% in 2022 according to a Medscape survey.
With the new search capabilities, Google hopes to reduce the amount of time clinicians spend looking through records.
“Anything that Google can do by applying our search technologies, our health-care technologies and research capabilities to make the journey of the clinicians and health-care providers and payers more quick, more efficient, saving them cost, I think ultimately benefits us as patients,” O’Malley said.
The tech giant will make the new features available to health and life sciences organizations through its Vertex AI Search platform which is already used by companies in other industries to sift through public websites, documents, and other databases.
Mercy Mutanya is a Tech enthusiast, Digital Marketer, Writer and IT Business Management Student.
She enjoys reading, writing, doing crosswords and binge-watching her favourite TV series.
