On Thursday, CareCloud, Inc. announced a landmark collaboration with Google Cloud to enable revolutionary generative AI technology and capabilities to benefit small and medium sized healthcare practices and outpatient providers.
Needless to say, Google Cloud is an industry titan and has made significant strides in not only the AI space, but has also achieved compelling progress in its healthcare work. CareCloud is known for its extensive work with small and medium sized healthcare organizations and its significant experience with technology based revenue cycle management, digital health, and provider services. Given its work in the industry for nearly two decades, CareCloud has collected extensive clinical and financial data sets— which now, by harnessing Google Cloud’s generative AI stack and capabilities, can be brought to life and be used in meaningful ways via search and recommendation generation.
Integration of this technology will enable practices that use CareCloud’s services to unlock a new realm of value: “For example, when a patient comes into a clinic using CareCloud, the generative AI-based solution will surface relevant information and assist clinicians and doctors as they recommend a plan of care, including medications, lab orders, diagnoses, and procedures based on their previous clinical history and current symptoms. Based on the recommended diagnoses, patient insurance, and other information, the solution will be able to show the clinic and patient what costs would be paid by the insurance and what amount would be owed by the patient.”
In an exclusive interview with Forbes, Aashima Gupta, Global Director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud, explains how the technology provides unique value: “Organizations need more than just large language models (LLMs). There is a huge concern in the healthcare setting about hallucinations [which, per Google Cloud, refers to “when a generative AI model outputs nonsense or invented information in response to a prompt”] The technology uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) combined with LLMs, which powers and enhances our enterprise search functions to the next level […] this is where the use cases become more promising and the results become more grounded and fact based.”
Enterprise Search (via Gen App Builder) is Google Cloud’s revolutionary technology which allows organizations to quickly build generative AI powered search engines to make use of their structured or unstructured data sets. Just last month, Google Cloud announced a groundbreaking partnership to bring Enterprise Search to renowned healthcare organization, Mayo Clinic.
BARCELONA, SPAIN – MARCH 2023: People walk in front of the Google Cloud’s booth during the Mobile … [+]
Hadi Chaudhry, CEO and President of CareCloud, is enthusiastic about the collaboration: “The vision for all of this technology is to use it to better the clinical experience for the patient and the physicians; we can leverage Google Cloud’s generative AI to take [our extensive data sets] further [and] use this data in a meaningful way…together, using Google’s technology, the right models can be trained for useful purposes.”
Adeel Sarwar, CTO of CareCloud, described potential use cases for the technology, starting from improving the pre-visit patient check-in process with smarter intake questions, to the system providing tailored recommendations and evidence-based guidelines curated to the patient’s need during the clinic visit, and finally, concluding with the system providing billing and financial information post-visit.
Importantly, Google Cloud has made it a top priority to develop its capabilities with strict adherence to Responsible AI guidelines: “Since 2018, Google’s AI Principles have served as a living constitution, keeping us motivated by a common purpose. Our center of excellence, the Responsible Innovation team, guides how we put these principles to work company-wide, and informs Google Cloud’s approach to building advanced technologies, conducting research, and drafting our policies.” Congruently, the company has placed meaningful guardrails to prioritize privacy, prevent bias, and enforce ethical development.
Overall, this venture is an incredible boon to ambulatory healthcare practices. While the majority of technology giants have thus far focused on providing AI capabilities primarily to large organizations, Google Cloud and CareCloud’s work in providing access to an often overlooked yet critically important sector of the healthcare infrastructure is a key step in improving healthcare outcomes for generations to come. Indeed, a commitment to continued innovation and meaningful collaborations such as this, premised by a steadfast goal of improving quality of care, display great promise for the future of healthcare.