Patient and provider experience, interoperability and innovative data use should be top of mind for Cerner after their planned acquisition by Oracle was announced Dec. 20, according to one healthcare technology founder.
Gaurav Kaushik, PhD, co-founder, president and COO of artificial intelligence data analytics company ScienceIO, spoke to Becker's about what the deal means for patient data, provider experience and interoperability.
He questions what Oracle is planning to do with patients' data and how they'll use it, including whether they'll consider learning from it by building artificial intelligence models to parse through it. Throughout this process, too, Dr. Kaushik wonders whether Oracle will consult with patients before changing any potential policies, especially regarding monetization of patient data.
"Are they actually bringing their existing customers, service customers and stakeholders to the table, including patients?" he asked. "Who gets to make those decisions, and is the patient at the center of what they're doing?"
Aside from centering the patient in decision-making, Dr. Kaushik also wonders how the deal will help providers, like physicians and nurses using Cerner's system. He pointed to Oracle's strong partnerships as a potential advantage to operability.
"One thing that is maybe a good upside on this is that Oracle has a strong technology partner system, and they could leverage this partner system to improve the quality of services and products that certain customers are receiving," he told Becker's.
Discussing the business side of the deal, Dr. Kaushik mentioned that other major cloud service providers — Oracle's competition — like Amazon Web Services, Google and Azure have already made moves in the healthcare industry.
"I think this is really a lot about Oracle putting a stake down in the healthcare space," he said. "I think that one thing that's exciting about Oracle, and any other technology provider that we think of as being more forward-looking and innovative, is how they can actually improve user experience around EHRs and not just treat it like a database, but treat it as a product that customers are using and want to make the customer happy and make the user happy."
He also voiced concerns with large tech companies owning massive amounts of patient data and creating silos around it.
"I think if we get into a situation where large companies are land-grabbing healthcare data, and you start to create walled gardens like we have with our smartphones, we'll get into kind of a dangerous space because it limits mobility for a patient," he said.
He questions whether Oracle and Cerner will find a way to make the data more accessible and improve interoperability across the same and different systems. Allowing patients to take their data with them as they move around is also an essential challenge to solve, Dr. Kaushik argues.
"So it'll be great to see if Oracle and other healthcare, tech-focused entities spend more time thinking through those challenges and not trying to recreate the smartphone landscape for healthcare," he said.