Here are 11 recent partnerships between healthcare organizations and big tech companies including Amazon, Apple and Google.
1. A team of Durham, N.C.-based Duke University researchers partnered with Microsoft Dec. 1 to create a ventilator splitting system to help COVID-19 patients in the wake of hospital surges and potential supply shortages.
2. Google began piloting a new tool Dec. 2 developed with HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that aims to help people remember important questions they want to ask their physician during their healthcare visits.
3. Pella (Iowa) Regional Health Center partnered with Apple to offer the tech giant's Health Records feature to patients. The app gives patients access to their health data directly on their iPhones.
4. Meditech tapped Google Cloud to deploy its new cloud-based, subscription model EHR platform. The EHR, dubbed Meditech Cloud Platform, is an extension of the company's cloud-based Expanse EHR.
5. Google launched a new Google Health app Dec. 9 that connects individuals to clinical studies. The tech giant partnered with Boston-based Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital for the app's first study, which focuses on respiratory illness.
6. Microsoft on Dec. 9 began deploying its InnerEye project, which uses AI models to detect cancerous tumors in CT scans, at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, England.
7. The California governor's office on Dec. 10 began rolling out the University of California San Diego Health's COVID-19 exposure notification system across the state. UCSD Health's app, dubbed the CA Notify app, uses Google and Apple's mobile exposure notification technology.
8. UnitedHealthcare will offer certain members of its wearable device well-being program a six-month free subscription to Apple Fitness+ beginning Jan. 1, 2021.
9. Allscripts on Dec. 16 launched its updated EHR platform Sunrise 20.0, which runs on Microsoft's cloud software Azure.
10. Highmark Health, the parent company of Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, entered into a strategic partnership with Google Cloud for its technology-driven healthcare model, Living Health.
11. Amazon, CVS Health and Thermo Fisher Scientific formed a coalition Dec. 22 focused on promoting employer-based COVID-19 testing as part of a national strategy to combat the pandemic.