From new investments to product updates to fresh partnerships, here are the latest stories about health IT companies, including Google, Microsoft and Amazon:
- Google and Ascension continued the collaboration they began in 2018 by rolling out a tool to help clinicians better organize and search for patient information.
- Microsoft said it will update its Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare to include new features for remote patient-monitoring and the Microsoft Teams and Epic EHR integration, slated to be released in April.
- Google said it will open its first office in Minnesota as part of its ongoing health partnership with Rochester-based Mayo Clinic.
- The Vaccination Credential Initiative, a collective of organizations including Cerner, Epic and Microsoft, said it hopes to begin testing its co-developed COVID-19 vaccine digital passport technology this spring.
- Cerner and Philips joined an $18 million funding round for Carevive, an oncology clinical data platform.
- California declined to renew its COVID-19 testing partnership with Google life science subsidiary Verily and will instead run its statewide testing program with OptumServe.
- A recent KLAS Research report revealed Epic's and MatrixCare's EHR platforms generate the highest satisfaction rates among home healthcare providers.
- Google provided $1.25 million in funding for an open-access data platform that houses more than 5 million anonymized COVID-19 records from 160 countries.
- Humana said it is piloting a new care management program, which is supported by Salesforce and Microsoft technology, that focuses on coordinating care for some Medicare Advantage members who have chronic conditions.
- Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon teamed up with Amazon and Microsoft to develop a new machine learning tool to be used in clinical forecasting.
- Facebook said it is developing a smartwatch that will integrate the platform's messaging and social features with health and fitness products from companies such as Peleton.
- Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Salesforce and Facebook were among companies that announced they are creating custom content for a COVID-19 vaccine public education initiative launched by The Ad Council and the CDC.
- Research from Google showed that hackers can quickly find security flaws in previously patched bugs, as bugs are often only partially fixed and can allow for previously undetected flaws, known as zero-day vulnerabilities, to be exploited repeatedly.
- Apple said it is collaborating with University Health Network in Toronto to test if Apple Watch monitoring can detect early signs of heart failure.