Community Health Systems Completes Data Migration with Google Cloud’s Generative AI Innovations

By PR Newswire On Feb 2, 2024

The migration enabled CHS to bring its data into one centralized view and apply Google Cloud gen AI capabilities to help drive administrative efficiencies and improve patient experiences

Community Health Systems, Inc., one of the nation’s leading healthcare companies, and Google Cloud announced that CHS has completed migration to a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources 1 (FHIR)-based clinical data platform and is now implementing new generative AI (gen AI) innovations using Google Cloud technologies.

The FHIR standard defines how healthcare information can be exchanged between different computer systems regardless of how it is stored in those systems. By bringing this data into one centralized, secure, FHIR-based cloud platform, CHS has made it easier for healthcare professionals to find the information they need and understand the clinical and operational metrics of the organization.

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Community Health Systems centralized its data and is using Google Cloud AI to drive efficiencies and improve experiences

The cloud and data migration effort will also enable CHS to accelerate adoption of new gen AI technologies that will help clinicians and other employees more easily interact with the data and interpret the results, including near-real time dashboards that track key operational areas such as surgeries and emergency rooms. Since completing the migration to Google Cloud, CHS has already improved data transparency across its organization and seen improvements in quality, outcomes, and operations.

“The goal of this migration extends well beyond modernizing our data infrastructure,” said Miguel S. Benet, MD, senior vice president of Clinical Operations at Community Health Systems. “By building a secure foundation to take advantage of new innovations in AI, we’re able to streamline our clinical providers’ workflow and advance the way we deliver patient care.”

With 71 affiliated hospitals across 15 states, CHS had data dispersed across numerous locations and formats. Accessing the data was cumbersome and required time-intensive searching through different sources. CHS needed a holistic view across their medical records, and turned to Google Cloud’s health data platform to help aggregate its patient data in secure, standard FHIR formats that enable interoperability among its clinical systems. CHS can also now leverage BigQuery, Google Cloud’s data warehouse solution, to present a complete picture of patient data and generate real-time insights such as bed capacity and other operational metrics.

With this centralized data repository, CHS is now in the process of implementing new Google Cloud gen AI technologies, including Vertex AI, and large language models to further drive administrative efficiencies and improve patient outcomes. Implementation of gen AI tools will free up time and enable healthcare professionals to focus on high-value patient interactions. Key ways CHS is looking to deploy gen AI include:

Distilling and disseminating large amounts of complex data: Deploying gen AI to improve clinical documentation and help capture the complexity of care.
Automating administrative tasks: Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform will help automate administrative tasks, such as assisting a user in generating a denial appeal letter, based on a predetermined set of criteria.
Providing patients with concise, contextualized information to improve Social Determinants of Health: Using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and capabilities with Google Maps, CHS-affiliated hospitals will be able to provide outgoing patients with a list of resources in their communities customized to their needs.

“We are proud to partner with industry leaders such as Community Health Systems, who are transforming the fundamental aspects of care delivery. CHS is at the forefront of harnessing healthcare data to adopt a more impactful and patient-centric approach,” said Aashima Gupta, global director of Healthcare Strategy & Solutions at Google Cloud. “From its migration to the cloud, to its implementation of generative AI tools, Community Health Systems is taking a forward-thinking approach to how it leverages healthcare data.”

Google Cloud’s customers retain control over their data. In healthcare settings, access and use of patient data is protected through the implementation of Google Cloud’s reliable infrastructure and secure data storage that support HIPAA compliance, along with each customer’s security, privacy controls, and processes.

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