Healthcare AI: Revolutionizing Search and Agents

Healthcare has historically been slow to adopt new tech, but AI is changing the game. Generative AI (gen AI) is making a big difference by easing the load of administrative tasks, like digging through medical records, drafting paperwork, and pinpointing candidates for clinical trials. As gen AI moves from a trendy term to a must-have tool, innovations like AI agents, AI-powered search, and AI platforms are opening up new ways to transform healthcare.

At the HIMSS 25 healthcare conference, we showcased how healthcare organizations are harnessing Google Cloud’s gen AI to create agents and search tools that lighten the administrative load on doctors and nurses, helping them deliver better care.

AI Agents in Healthcare

AI agents are smart tech designed to work on their own, often doing things that seem almost human-like. In healthcare, they can do everything from setting up appointments to analyzing medical images. While they're still in the early days, researchers are looking at using AI agents for things like personalized medicine, keeping an eye on patients from afar, and even discovering and developing new drugs.

Basalt Health just announced they're rolling out advanced AI agents to help medical assistants (MAs). These agents prep MAs for patient visits by getting patient charts ready and handling admin tasks. They can also spot gaps in care and potential health risks, like reminding folks to get mammograms or colonoscopies. Basalt’s agents get the nitty-gritty of medical advice, can handle both structured and unstructured patient data, and navigate complex admin workflows. They run in a secure Google Cloud environment, using Vertex AI, Gemini, and other Google Cloud tech to make sure they're spot-on and reliable. A big part of their development is keeping things ethical, being transparent, and tackling issues like data privacy and bias in algorithms.

Google Agentspace makes it easier for organizations to build AI agents, thanks to Gemini’s smart reasoning, Google-quality search, and access to enterprise data. It provides the tools and setup needed to link agents to data sources, set up workflows, and keep an eye on how they're doing.

Search with Gen AI

The healthcare industry churns out tons of data. We often say it's data-rich but information-poor, because even with all that data, it's tough for healthcare workers to find what they need. AI-powered search tools go beyond just looking for keywords, using natural language processing and machine learning to understand what people are really asking for. This helps organizations pull out the most relevant and accurate info, even if it's hidden deep in a huge database.

At HIMSS, several organizations talked about how they're using Vertex AI Search for healthcare to give clinicians quick access to vital information, which helps lead to better patient outcomes.

Freenome: Identifying Candidates for Cancer Screenings

Biotech company Freenome is teaming up with Google Cloud to boost colorectal cancer screening rates. They've developed a blood test for early CRC detection and will use Google Cloud's AI tools to figure out which patients should be screened first. By looking at deidentified patient data, including risk factors, demographics, and social determinants of health, Freenome can spot folks who might have slipped through the cracks with regular screening methods. They also use other Google Cloud services like Compute Engine, BigQuery, and Looker for data analysis, training models, and visualizing results.

Counterpart Health: Earlier Identification and Management of Diseases

Counterpart Health, part of Clover Health, announced they're using Vertex AI Search for healthcare in their Counterpart Assistant software. This lets clinicians search a patient’s entire digital health record right at the point of care. It pulls together insights from over 100 data sources — like recent tests, hospital discharges, and medication adherence — to help with early diagnosis and managing chronic diseases for value-based care.

MEDITECH: Helping Clinicians Find What They Need

MEDITECH has added AI-powered search and summarization right into its electronic health records system, Expanse. This means clinicians can instantly get a quick summary of relevant patient records, lab results, and past notes, all within the workflow they're used to. It saves time and helps them make better decisions.

Suki: Ambient AI with Search

Suki announced how its AI assistant lets doctors ask questions in plain language, like, "What’s the latest on when patients should start colon cancer screening if they have a family history?" and get clear, AI-generated answers. These new features, built with Vertex AI Search for healthcare, make Suki one of the first end-to-end clinical assistants that can handle a wide range of tasks, from ambient documentation to coding suggestions, patient record summaries, medical reference answers, and more.

Swing by Google Cloud at HIMSS booth #673 to see all these cool new technologies in action. You can also check out more about the news in Google Cloud’s Press Corner.