Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1219854
36 CIO / HEALTH IT Amazon, IBM, Microsoft have access to millions of medical records: WSJ By Mackenzie Garrity A mazon, IBM and Microso are among the big tech companies to make deals with hospitals and health systems to analyze patients' medical records in order to develop new solutions, according to e Wall Street Journal. Microso signed an agreement with Renton, Wash.-based Providence St. Joseph Health, which records around 20 million patient vis- its annually. e medical records being shared with Microso have not been stripped of per- sonally identifiable information. While Prov- idence St. Joseph Health originally said that information shared with Microso would be deidentified, the health system's CIO said that was not possible. Microso is using the patient data and notes to develop cancer algorithms. "It was not intended to mislead," Providence St. Joseph Health CIO B.J. Moore said, accord- ing to WSJ. Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital partnered with IBM. In the deal, IBM is using patient data to create artificial intelligence that will allow clinicians to share data for specific requests. As of now, Brigham and Women's Hospital has not shared personally identifiable information, reported WSJ. Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Re- search Center signed a deal with Amazon Web Services that gives the tech company permis- sion to access patients' health information. AWS is using that data to design soware that can read medical notes. While these deals may raise concerns for pa- tients and providers, there is no indication of wrongdoing. Under HIPAA, hospitals are allowed to share data with business partners without asking for patients' permission. is may be just the beginning of hospitals be- coming brokers to tech companies as the data hospitals store becomes more lucrative. n Cerner teams up with virtual care provider Mackenzie Garrity C erner announced Jan. 13 it has partnered with virtual primary care provider HealthTap to extend its offerings beyond on-site and near- site centers. The EHR vendor will leverage HealthTap's digital platform to support self-funded employers. These employers will now be able to offer end-to- end primary care services to their employees. Cerner users will now be able to access a board-certified physician 24/7. HealthTap's platform also uses artificial intelligence so users can search phy- sician answers to their questions and receive guidance for many medical concerns they may have. "At Cerner, we are focused on bringing innovative solutions to some of healthcare's most urgent challenges, and digital technology offers employ- ers the opportunity to provide convenient and cost-efficient services," said David Bradshaw, senior vice president of consumer and employer solutions at Cerner. n Epic distancing itself from Google Cloud integrations Jackie Drees E pic is reportedly telling customers that it will not pursue further integra- tions with Google Cloud, according to a Jan. 17 CNBC report. The EHR giant will instead focus on collaborations with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Epic has been reaching out and calling its hos- pital clients that use Google Cloud for medical research and data storage, among other IT functions, people with knowledge of the situation told CNBC. Epic declined to comment on Google specifically, but provided the follow- ing statement to CNBC regarding the company's decision process when choosing third-party partners. "We invest substantial time and engineering effort in evaluating and under- standing the infrastructure Epic runs on. Scalability, reliability and security are important factors we consider when evaluating these underlying tech- nologies," said Seth Hain, Epic's vice president of research and development. Epic's move to distance itself from Google comes after news of the tech- nology giant's partnership with St. Louis-based Ascension. Under the part- nership, dubbed Project Nightingale, Ascension moved its EHR to Google Cloud and the tech giant gained access to data on millions of patients to help the company develop a search engine for EHRs. Privacy concerns arose when Ascension employees reported that patients and providers were un- aware data was being shared with Google. Google Health leader David Feinberg, MD, recently said the company is "super proud" of the partnership, despite the news. Google Cloud de- clined CNBC's request for comment. n