Google, Highmark partner up to create care tools

Highmark Health on Thursday said it is partnering with Google Cloud on a digital system meant to eventually make it easier for patients and their caregivers to communicate — a six-year partnership that could create more than 100 jobs.

The deal between the tech giant and the Pittsburgh-based hospital and health care company aims to make health care delivery “more coordinated, personalized and technology-enabled,” the company said.

Highmark Health — which expects the initiative, “Living Health,” to create about 125 new jobs to support development of the digital platform — is the parent of health insurance provider Highmark Inc. and the Allegheny Health Network, with its 13 hospitals. Search engine giant Google, based in California, has offices in East Liberty.

Highmark executives said the technology will allow patients and caregivers to share information seamlessly and will help cut out cumbersome delays and data gaps that too often make it difficult to prevent disease or slow its progression.

“The Living Health model takes the information and preferences that a person provides us, applies the analytics we’ve co-developed with Google Cloud, and creates a dynamic, easily accessible, personalized health plan and support team that fits an individual’s unique needs,” said Tony Farah, executive vice president and chief medical and clinical transformation officer of Highmark Health.

Dr. Farah, a cardiologist, used the example of high blood pressure, which is very common in Americans and often uncontrolled.

Instead of asking patients to take

blood pressure measurements at home or at a supermarket and then hoping they record and submit it, doctors could ask them to wear a Bluetooth device — like a watch or a ring — that measures and transmits the blood pressure data.

The new digital platform would be able to analyze the information and quickly send results back to both patients and doctors.

“Instead of waiting a month — sometimes six months — for this interaction to take place, it takes place in real time, independent of where the patient is,” Dr. Farah said. “It really reduces the incidence of stroke.”

Karen Hanlon, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Highmark Health, said privacy and security will be a guiding principle. Consumers will be able to opt in or out of the program.

“This will be Highmark’s approach going forward to engaging with our customers, both our insurance customers and our patients,” she said. “It will be core to our offering,”

Ms. Hanlon expects the first version of the platform to be built within a year, but she did not have an estimate for when it will be rolled out to users.

Highmark is not disclosing the price tag for the initiative.