Innovative healthcare tech collaborations

Across the healthcare industry, innovation continues to drive new forms of collaboration to meet today’s challenges. 

• In North Carolina, Novant Health responded to the COVID-19 lockdown by partnering with a drone company to distribute medical supplies to rural mountain communities in its more remote service areas.  
• Global company Axial3D tackled the shortage of COVID testing supplies around the world by designing 3D-printed nasal swabs for COVID tests. 
• In New York, the Allegheny Health Network launched a virtual urgent care program for multiple hospitals in its healthcare system to boost its capacity to care for critically ill patients and build a forward-looking infrastructure for virtual care. 
• Blue Shield of California has adopted Google Cloud’s new AI-powered claims processing tool designed to accelerate the prior authorization process. The AI analyzes unstructured data including images, PDFs, and health records. Automating prior authorization could save more than $454 million per year, and this collaboration makes a step in the right direction.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) has partnered with Philips HealthSuite Imaging to create the Amazon HealthLake Imaging application. The tool is available through the Amazon cloud platform and is designed to expedite diagnosis and treatment for clinicians, including radiologists, improve health outcomes and reduce costs.
• Epic Electronic Health Record (EHR) software will integrate Microsoft’s generative AI tool, Azure Open AI,  to draft messages on behalf of clinicians. The tools with automatically respond to messages clinicians receive through the MyChart. Currently, UC San Diego Health, UW Health, and Stanford Health Care are piloting the technology. The technology could be a breakthrough in addressing clinician burnout by automating administrative tasks.

Other healthcare providers are innovating new models of care delivery including “perioperative surgical homes,” building capacity in primary care to integrate behavioral health and chronic disease management, and using telehealth to address transitions across the continuum of care. 

Building on extensive experience in the fields of journalism, media production, and learning design and development, John Marc Green’s newest adventure is serving as Director of CHIME Innovation. In this role, his ongoing conversations with CHIME Members and Partners provide insights and direction to serve their interests in a variety of ways, including digital healthcare innovation journalism, professional development events and program facilitation, and on-demand educational development through CHIME Innovation.