Google Cloud and Epic have reached an agreement to enable health systems to migrate their EHRs to the cloud, while Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health will be the first organization to do so.
The partnership between the tech giant and leading EHR vendor will help facilitate health systems' digital transformation, giving them access to analytics and artificial intelligence services that aim to boost patient outcomes.
"We expect running Epic on Google Cloud will be simpler for our IT and developers and will allow them to focus more on uncovering creative ways to improve patient care," said Kash Patel, executive vice president and chief digital information officer for Hackensack Meridian Health, in a Nov. 14 Google Cloud news release. "Having everything with Google Cloud will provide a huge opportunity for discoveries. For example, data from our AI avatar for natural language processing will already be in Google Cloud, ready for us to ask questions. This will speed up our work and make information more accessible."
Google Cloud and Hackensack are also collaborating on a "healthcare data engine accelerator" project to improve equity, patient flow and value-based care, as well as an artificial intelligence imaging tool.
"With our Epic EHR on Google Cloud, we'll be able to innovate faster, and benefit from a more efficient and secure cloud environment," stated Hackensack CEO Robert Garrett.