38 Big Tech partnerships in healthcare this year: Amazon, Google & more – Becker’s Hospital Review

From HCA Healthcare teaming up with Google Cloud to build healthcare algorithms to Amazon Care, Intermountain and Ascension's joint home care coalition, the first half of 2021 has recorded several new partnerships between Big Tech and healthcare providers.

Here are 38 healthcare partnerships with tech companies Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft that Becker's Hospital Review has reported on so far in 2021.

January

1. The Oklahoma State Department of Health teamed up with Microsoft to build a mobile app that informs people when they are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine and helps them sign up for appointments.

2. Los Angeles County partnered with health startup Healthvana to roll out a digital offering that allows residents to store records of their COVID-19 vaccination in Apple Wallet or on a similar Google platform.

3. Clearwater, Fla.-based BayCare Health System began deploying Amazon Alexa devices in 2,500 rooms across its 14 hospitals.

4. The Department of Veterans Affairs launched an initiative with Fitbit to provide 10,000 veterans, caregivers and VA staff with free memberships to Fitbit's digital health services.

5. Google sister company Verily inked an agreement with Microsoft to run its biomedical research platform on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform.

6. Apple and Cambridge, Mass.-based neurological therapies company Biogen partnered on a research project to analyze how the Apple Watch and iPhone could help monitor cognitive health.

7. Big Tech companies and major hospitals teamed up to form the Vaccination Credential Initiative, a collective working to create a digital, interoperable vaccination record system. Some of the partners working on the project include Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, Epic, Cerner, Salesforce, Change Healthcare and Oracle.

February

8. Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente began working with IT services company Accenture and Microsoft to transition to the tech giant's Azure cloud platform.

9. Minneapolis-based University of Minnesota partnered with Google Cloud to create an education program for students pursuing healthcare careers.

10. Google announced plans to open its first office in Minnesota as part of its partnership with Rochester-based Mayo Clinic.

11. Google Cloud integrated its machine learning technology into the cervical cancer diagnostic screening system of Marlborough, Mass.-based medical technology company Hologic.

12. Humana started piloting a new chronic care management program, which will use Salesforce Health Cloud and Microsoft's Azure and Power BI cloud technologies.

13. Apple inked a collaboration with University Health Network in Toronto to test if Apple Watch monitoring can detect early signs of heart failure.

March

14. Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh developed a new machine learning tool to use in clinical forecasting, which Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure funded.

15. Intermountain Healthcare, Ascension and Amazon Care became founding members of a new healthcare coalition aimed at expanding home-based clinical care.

16. Google and St. Louis-based Ascension continued their 2018 collaboration by rolling out a tool to help clinicians better organize and search for patient information.

17. Apple updated Apple Maps with a vaccine availability and locator tool developed by the CDC and Boston Children's Hospital.

18. Highmark Health, the parent company of Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, expanded its tech partnership with Google Cloud through a new six-year collaboration with the tech giant's sister company, Verily.

19. Apple partnered with the University of Michigan School of Public Health to test hearing health and noise exposure using Apple's Noise app, which measures noise levels and alerts users when a noise may be dangerous to their hearing.

20. Apple and Harvard University teamed up to conduct a large-scale study on menstruation symptoms with the goal of advancing science around and destigmatizing menstruation.

April

21. Verily, Google's sister company, teamed up with Atlanta-based Morehouse College to provide scholarships to students interested in STEM with the goal to create an institutional link between historically underrepresented students and the biotech and life sciences industry.

22. New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health expanded a program to equip COVID-19 patients' rooms with Amazon Echo Show devices, which feature two-way video calling capabilities that let clinicians check on patients.

23. UPMC and Advocate Aurora Health became the two latest health systems to join Moving Health Home, a new healthcare coalition founded by Amazon Care, Intermountain and Ascension.

24. Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center joined the pilot of the Google-developed EHR search tool, which aims to help clinicians better organize and scan for patient information.

25. Apple partnered with researchers from Seattle-based University of Washington and Seattle Flu Study to test if the Apple Watch or iPhone can be used to predict COVID-19.

May

26. Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System partnered with Google Cloud and Miracle Software Systems to launch an international competition in Detroit to propose ideas for reducing health inequalities through technology.

27. University Park, Pa.-based Penn State College of Medicine built an Amazon Alexa skill to deliver care interventions to breast cancer patients in their own homes.

28. Amwell unveiled its new Converge telehealth platform, which can host and operate digital offerings from Cleveland Clinic, Google Cloud and others.

29. Amazon Care, the e-commerce giant's new healthcare venture, signed its first enterprise client: Precor, a fitness company recently acquired by Peloton.

30. Google and Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine teamed up to develop an artificial intelligence tool to support clinician work by triaging mammography patients.

31. The University of Washington partnered with Microsoft and the Creative Destruction Lab, a nonprofit science and tech program, to launch a collaborative focused on artificial intelligence and biomedical innovations.

32. UPMC Health Plan rolled out a tool that lets members learn more about their benefits and health insurance topics by voicing questions to Amazon Alexa and Google Home Assistant devices.

33. While Microsoft's $19.7 billion acquisition of speech recognition company Nuance Communications is poised to increase its healthcare footprint, the tech giant's top cloud official told CNBC it is not interested in automating everything physicians do.

34. The Atlanta-based Morehouse School of Medicine launched its Health Equity Tracker, a Google.org-funded data platform showing the disparate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on people of color and those with a lower socioeconomic status.

35. HCA Healthcare inked a multiyear collaboration with Google Cloud focused on building a health data analytics platform to support the Nashville, Tenn.-based system's clinical and operational workflows.

June

36. Cerner, Meditech and Athenahealth teamed up with Apple to support the tech giant's new health data sharing feature, which is slated to become available this fall.

37. Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic joined Apple's Health Records project, which gives patients access to their medical records directly from their iPhone.

38. Boston Children's Hospital, Google and Ariadne Labs launched a new interactive, data-driven vaccine equity planning tool to help officials locate "vaccine deserts," or places with limited access to COVID-19 vaccines.

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38 Big Tech partnerships in healthcare this year: Amazon, Google & more - Becker's Hospital Review