HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA), one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers, and Google Cloud today announced a new collaboration designed to use generative AI technology to improve workflows on time-consuming tasks, such as clinical documentation, so physicians and nurses can focus more on patient care.

This expanded work with Google Cloud is part of a strategic partnership announced in 2021 that includes safeguards to protect patient privacy and the security of data. HCA Healthcare’s partnership with Google Cloud, as well as its multi-year implementation of MEDITECH Expanse which began in 2022, are key elements of HCA Healthcare’s work to advance its digital transformation.

As part of a pilot program that began early this year, approximately 75 emergency room physicians at four HCA Healthcare hospitals started using Google’s AI technology to quickly and more easily document key medical information from conversations during patient visits. It is part of a collaboration among HCA Healthcare, Google Cloud, and Augmedix, a healthcare technology company that specializes in ambient medical documentation. According to a 2022 study in JAMA Internal Medicine, 58% of physicians said time spent on documentation limits the amount of time they can spend with patients.

Physicians use an Augmedix app on a hands-free device to create accurate and timely medical notes from clinician-patient conversations. Augmedix's proprietary platform then leverages natural language processing, along with Google Cloud’s generative AI technology and multi-party medical speech-to-text processing, to instantly convert the data into medical notes, which physicians review and finalize before they are transferred in real time to the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR).

Google Cloud’s approach to data governance and privacy policies are designed for its customers to retain control over their data. In healthcare settings, access and use of patient data is protected through the implementation of Google Cloud’s reliable infrastructure and secure data storage that support HIPAA compliance, along with each customer’s security, privacy controls, and processes. Google Cloud’s responsible approach to generative AI also means customers have access to tools to directly tune large language models and to review model responses for biased or unvalidated content, teaching the model to avoid inappropriate outputs.