MEDITECH and Google Health highlight pilot phase collaboration

MEDITECH and Google Health have advanced their search and summarization collaboration to the next phase, with Mile Bluff Medical Center (Mauston, WI) and DCH Health System (Tuscaloosa, AL) signing as early adopters of their integrated solution. The collaboration was announced earlier this year and will embed the Google Health search and summarization capabilities directly within the clinical workflow of the Expanse EHR. 

MEDITECH saw the opportunity to leverage Google Health’s search and summarization capabilities to create a longitudinal view of a patient's health history within the web-based Expanse platform. This integrated workflow will provide clinicians with timely and intuitive access to relevant clinical information on their patients from both legacy platforms and disparate systems. Ultimately, this collaborative effort between MEDITECH and Google Health will enable a more holistic view of the patient and their conditions and make their medical history more actionable.

“This feature takes our EHR to new heights in our ability to provide holistic, patient-centered care. It is positioning our doctors, nurses, and care providers to aggregate information on patients’ past and present conditions faster, to improve the quality of care,” said CIO Billy Helmandollar of DCH Health System. 

“We must innovate and think outside the box in order to have advancements in healthcare technology and reduce the burden on clinicians. I am very encouraged by MEDITECH’s commitment to work with innovative partners and make the system even better than it is today.”

Clinicians at DCH Health System are equally excited about the workflow improvements this integration will provide. “Having a consolidated, condition-level view of both structured and unstructured data from across the patient’s history — regardless of how or where it is stored — means less time searching records and more time treating our patients,” said Dr. Robin Wilson, CMO of DCH Health System.

The Expanse solution will leverage Google Health’s intelligent summarization, search, and second-level insights capabilities to extract information from different parts of the patient record — such as current and legacy data and scanned documents — to produce a curated summary of a patient’s health conditions. 

“We are looking forward to these new capabilities and expect they will lead to better health outcomes, in addition to improved overall satisfaction for patients and clinicians," said IT Director Pat Stubbs of Mile Bluff Medical Center, which will be adopting the solution on their cloud-based MEDITECH-as-a-Service (MaaS)platform.

“Having the ability to quickly search disparate sources will give providers a more complete summary of a patient’s medical history – without needing to take the time to access multiple sources of records. This in turn will give providers more face-to-face time with patients, and allow them to focus on providing care and treatment."

MEDITECH COO and Executive Vice President Helen Waters says that collaboration between technology innovators is one of the most important avenues to advance EHR usage. “One of the many benefits of a cloud-based platform like Expanse is the ability to easily leverage cutting-edge or niche technology from partners,” she said. 

“Imagine the profound impact we can have on clinician satisfaction when a physician can easily find relevant information from within a patient’s health history and feel positively influenced by the technology vs. frustrated by its presence. Our collaboration with Google Health is going to make this vision a reality by addressing the burnout openly discussed in our collective EHR market space, regardless of which EHR vendor is deployed. Together, we will deliver a solution that ensures access to meaningful and actionable patient data — including conditions and disease history— curated and presented to busy doctors and nurses as part of their natural workflow to help guide all of their most important decisions."

MEDITECH Expanse and Google Health’s tools are designed to adhere to industry best practices and regulations, including HIPAA, and will not use patient data for advertising. Healthcare organizations maintain ownership and oversight of their data through business associate agreements. 

If you are attending HLTH, please join Google Health and MEDITECH on Monday, November 14 at 3:30 p.m. at the Newsroom Stage to learn more about these early adopters.