Becker's Hospital Review

66 CIO / HEALTH IT Google developing consumer-facing health records tool: 7 things to know By Jackie Drees G oogle is in the early stages of a project that aims to explore and develop a consum- er-facing health records tool for Android users, according to an April 9 STAT report. Seven things to know: 1. Google launched a user feedback program that aims to assess how patients want to access and share their EHR data. e project could support the de- velopment of a medical records tool similar to Ap- ple's Health Records app, according to the report. 2. A Google spokesperson told Becker's Hospital Re- view that the company "is running a user feedback program to test features that give users the ability to collect health information from their provider pa- tient portals, organize, search, and share it with the people they trust in a private and secure manner." 3. e tech giant is recruiting about 300 patients for its health records study from academic med- ical centers and community health facilities in California, Atlanta and Chicago. 4. Google is picking study participants whose pro- vider organizations use Epic as their EHR vendor. e study is also only open to Android device users. Participants will opt-in to and consent to sharing their feedback for the study. 5. Google is not directly partnering with any healthcare organizations for the project, according to STAT, but it has notified at least four healthcare providers to alert them of the effort, including University of California, Davis; UCSF; Oakland, Calif.-based Alameda Health System; and Chica- go-based Access Community Health Network. 6. is Google health records project follows de- velopments in the company's Care Studio EHR tool. Earlier in April, Boston-based Beth Isra- el Deaconess Medical Center joined St. Lou- is-based Ascension in piloting the tool, which aims to help clinicians better organize and scan for patient information. 7. Under the company's privacy policy, Goo- gle will not use any health information for advertising purposes. n How AI can make 'I missed the meeting' an obsolete excuse By Katie Adams A rtificial intelligence companies are developing audio transcrip- tion tools that can create searchable archives of calls and meet- ings, WIRED reported April 15. Artificial intelligence companies have greatly improved their automated audio transcription in recent years, and the technology is now able to produce transcripts with impressive accuracy, according to WIRED. One example is Stedi, a company that makes business-to-business soft- ware. It developed a tool called Rewatch that records meetings and uses voice-dictation AI to transcribe it, providing employees with a search- able record of everything said during the meeting. AI companies Otter.ai and Trint also offer voice-dictation to produce meet- ing transcripts, and Zoom has built-in wares that offer meeting notes. n Optum launches virtual care offering nationwide: 5 things to know By Jackie Drees U nitedHealth Group subsidiary Optum has deployed a telehealth product across all 50 states, company leaders announced April 15. Five things to know: 1. The virtual care product, dubbed Optum Virtual Care, is now live in all 50 states, said OptumHealth CEO Wyatt Decker during UnitedHealth Group's Q1 2021 earnings call, which was transcribed by the Motley Fool. 2. With the offering, Optum aims to integrate physical care, virtual care, home care and behavioral care. 3. Optum Virtual Care offers virtual health services but also, if necessary, can connect patients to a brick-and-mortar facility for more complex care or identifying and triaging both physical and behavioral healthcare needs, Mr. Decker said. 4. UnitedHealth Group and Optum have stood up more than 17,000 providers during the pandemic on telehealth solutions and have seen continued growth in areas such as behavioral healthcare. "We're seeing continued sustainability of virtual care solutions which, as you may know, peaked during the height of the pandemic, have de- clined some, but are still probably 10 times where they were pre-pan- demic," Mr. Decker said. "And certain conditions ... or areas like behav- ioral healthcare are now seeing about 50 percent utilization through virtual services. So we're very excited about where we can take this off." 5. Optum's virtual care offering comes after Amazon's March 17 an- nouncement that the company is expanding its virtual medical service to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., later this year. n

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