Dive Brief:
- Google is linking up with longtime collaborator Mayo Clinic to explore generative artificial intelligence’s applications in the hospital, the tech giant announced Wednesday morning.
- Mayo will use a Google Cloud tool that lets organizations create chatbots and search applications using generative AI to answer complex questions and produce summaries faster than traditional search functionalities.
- Mayo could improve the efficiency of clinical workflows and make it easier for clinicians and researchers to find information, Google said.
Dive Insight:
Doctors rely on a variety of information in their day-to-day operations, pulling data from medical records and clinical guidelines to help determine the right plan of care for patients. However, that data can be unstandardized or siloed in different locations, complicating easy access. Google’s tools have the potential to help Mayo unlock information that typically isn’t conventionally searchable, said Cris Ross, Mayo Clinic CIO.
Generative AI, algorithms that are capable of creating new content, roared onto the tech scene earlier this year with the popular chatbot ChatGPT. The technology is already being deployed in healthcare organizations, including hospitals, despite fears that early adopters might be moving too quickly and without necessary guardrails.
Proponents argue generative AI will transform healthcare through applications like writing prior authorization request forms, interpreting novel medical cases or transcribing patient visits.
Google has its own large language model, called Med-PaLM 2, that was specifically trained on medical data, allowing it to sift through and make sense of massive amounts of healthcare information. Google made Med-PaLM available to a select group of healthcare customers to explore use cases earlier this year, and in May expanded Med-PaLM’s ability to analyze images and respond to questions.
Partnerships between hospitals and tech giants around research and development have become more common, and Google and Mayo have a long history of collaboration in the space.
Google has long used Mayo Clinic doctors to vet medical information on Google Search, and the two inked a decadelong partnership in 2019 around cloud hosting and R&D. Google opened a new office near Mayo’s main campus in Rochester, Minnesota, roughly two years later.
Since then, the two have worked to move Mayo’s vast amounts of patient data to the cloud and co-develop new AI tools, including testing AI in radiotherapy for cancer treatment, and Mayo partnered with Google sister company Verily in 2021 to build new clinical decision support tools.
Mayo is one of several healthcare organizations working with Google to develop its capabilities in the clinical setting. Google did not respond to questions on the other organizations by time of publication.
