Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1476979
58 INNOVATION Northwell CIO seeks to 'take friction out of seeking, receiving and paying for care' with Google deal By Giles Bruce N ew York's largest health system recently selected Google Cloud to help it innovate in such areas as predictive clinical insights, digital scheduling, automated payer interactions and intelligent visit summaries. Becker's talked to Sophy Lu, senior vice president and CIO of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, about what the relationship with the tech giant will mean for the health system and its patients, clinicians and team members. How did the deal with Google Cloud come together? Northwell is doubling down on digital transformation to differentiate us from the competition and support our mission. Looking at our digital objectives, we aim to take the friction out of seeking, receiving and paying for care and become the most trusted brand in healthcare. Obviously, our core product is to make sure we're delivering quality care. We want to give the clinician the ability to practice medicine using digital tools to optimize care delivery and engage with patients in a way that improves quality and health equity. To do that, we knew we needed to look at different alliances in Big Tech and little tech and double down on ourselves to accelerate that journey. How did Northwell decide on Google? We knew that foundationally we needed to look at ways to modernize our technology platform securely and enable speed to market. Also because we are a very fast-growing, multidiscipline, multifaceted organization, we must harness the power of data to enable innovation and transformation. Google Cloud brings that to the table and has a culture that complements the technology, and together with our clinical acumen, will help us leap into our innovation agenda together. What will be the benefits to Northwell Health and, ultimately, providers and patients? e benefits will be to enhance Northwell's digital technology and services to have more speed to market, the ability to easily access data, and lead on innovation and interoperability to ultimately transform traditional healthcare delivery and promote wellness for the communities we serve and beyond. What innovations do you expect to come from working with Google Cloud? We identified areas of enhanced experiences to start with, including optimizing the scheduling of clinicians' time; giving providers and team members access to the right information at the right time as they care Image Credit: Northwell Health/Courtesy Northwell