Ascension to expand pilot of Google EHR search

ST. LOUIS-BASED ASCENSION is expanding a pilot of an electronic health record tool from Google, a next step in the controversial partnership it struck with the tech giant in 2018.

The pilot began with a “small group of clinicians” in Nashville and Jacksonville, Fla., according to a blog post from Eduardo Conrado, Ascension’s executive vice president of strategy and innovations. It is expanding to roughly 200 clinicians.

The tool, dubbed “Care Studio,” brings together patients’ health data from separate systems across inpatient and outpatient facilities and makes it “searchable” for clinicians, similar to Google’s web search. That means clinicians can search for information without having to type in a term verbatim how it’s written in the patient’s chart.

“This approach will organize each patient’s historical diagnoses, laboratory tests, medications, treatments and progress notes, so that our clinicians can surface the relevant information needed when it’s needed,” Conrado wrote.

Pilot clinicians will provide feedback to Google as the company continues to develop the tool. In a presentation at last year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Conrado said the health system had already started testing the tool at one of its Florida hospitals, and it has reduced length of stay and improved satisfaction scores there.

Ascension will eventually make the search tool available to all of its clinicians. It will be optional and does not replace the EHR system.

Although Ascension’s partnership with Google began in 2018, a 2019 Wall Street Journal article drew attention to the collaboration, sparking public concern over patient privacy protections.

Ascension and Google have maintained that the partnership is covered by a business associate agreement they signed, as required by HIPAA.

Patient data is encrypted and stored in a cloud environment managed by Ascension, and Ascension doesn’t share data with Google to develop the tool.

Google doesn’t own the data used for the EHR search tool and cannot use it for advertising, according to Google.

However, some Google Health staffers may view identifiable patient data as part of validating the accuracy of the tool. In such cases, Google Health staffers’ access is logged and reported to Ascension for auditing.

Google has partnered with a growing number of health systems in recent years. Late last month, Google opened its first office in Minnesota to strengthen its relationship with Mayo Clinic. The two announced a 10-year partnership in 2019 involving both cloud storage and innovation projects. ●