An executive with Ascension Healthcare, whose properties include Ascension Seton Hays, said the company’s partnership with Google will “better serve the evolving needs of consumers, patients and caregivers.”
The cooperation between the two entities has come under fire lately, in part because of consumer distrust of the tech giant’s handling of sensitive information. It has resulted in numerous stories in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other national media outlets, and has also sparked an investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights.
In a blog published Nov. 12, Eduardo Conrado, Ascension’s executive vice president for strategy and innovations, denied the partnership was a secret, noting that Google first announced it as part of its second-quarter earnings report.
“Acute care administrative and clinical leaders across Ascension have been informed of the work, enterprise-wide webinars have been held, and the clinical leaders of our employed physician group have been informed in detail about the project,” he wrote. “In our deployment sites, front-line nurses and clinicians have not only been informed but have actively participated in the project.”
Ascension Seton Hays did not respond directly to a question by the Hays Free Press, instead referring the newspaper to Conrado’s written remarks.
The collaboration goes by the code name of Project Nightingale, and involves the hosting of clinical data in the Google Cloud Platform “housed within an Ascension-owned private space,” Conrado said. “Google is not permitted to use the data for marketing or research purposes. Hospitals and clinical software vendors across the country have converted or are in the process of converting to electronic health records stored in the cloud,” he said, predicting that approach will be adopted by the entire healthcare industry.
Conrado said the partnership’s work “is in compliance with applicable regulations, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and is covered by a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) that governs Protected Health Information (PHI).”
Any exchange of protected information, he said, “is for the purpose of helping our providers support patient care.”
“Our data will always be separate from Google’s consumer data,” Conrado wrote, “and it will never be used by Google for purposes such as targeting consumers for advertising.”
The future, he went on to write, will involve artificial intelligence, which “holds promise to help physicians more effectively and efficiently treat patients … Artificial intelligence/machine learning will help provide insights, with a licensed clinician always making the final treatment decisions.”
He continued, “This is groundbreaking work that will improve the experience of patients and consumers, as well as caregivers … We’re excited about this opportunity to invest in technology-enabled services that address the toughest healthcare problems facing our nation.”
