In December 2020, Highmark Health and Google Cloud announced a six-year strategic partnership to develop its “Living Health” model. Now Pittsburgh-based Highmark has added a relationship with Verily, Google Cloud’s sister company within Alphabet.
The Living Health model is designed to eliminate the fragmentation in healthcare, re-engineering the healthcare delivery model to provide a seamless, simpler and smarter customer experience, Highmark said. In addition to offering improved interactions with patients, the goal is to free clinicians from time-consuming administrative tasks while providing them with timely personalized data, real-time remote monitoring, and actionable information about each patient. The six-year collaboration agreement centers on Verily providing digitally enabled care solutions to manage chronic conditions, with potential initial areas of focus to include congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as a clinical insights platform that will allow Highmark Health to use data to guide patients through personalized pathways for care.
Leveraging Verily's advanced analytics and artificial intelligence and Highmark Health's clinical insights and expertise -- gathered through its unique relationship and experience with patients as both insurer and provider – these solutions will be refined to build evidence and clinical validation for condition-specific solutions. Verily, and its subsidiary Onduo, will simultaneously collaborate with Google Cloud to integrate these chronic disease solutions into Highmark's Living Health model and the Living Health Dynamic Platform currently being built on Google Cloud.
Ultimately, the Living Health Dynamic Platform will enable clinicians to determine the appropriate next set of personalized actions for each patient, taking into account comorbidities, patient interests and goals, and more, Highmark said. These chronic disease solutions will also extend care outside of the traditional clinical setting -- integrating virtual care, digitally enabled devices and coaching to support patients in between visits.
"This partnership is truly symbiotic," said Tony Farah, M.D., executive vice president and chief medical and clinical transformation officer of Highmark Health, in a statement. "Together, we will drive transformational and more sustainable change, and we will do it faster than we could working separately. Through the significant work we have already done, Highmark Health has clearly demonstrated that we can improve people's health by moving care upstream and that success comes from engaging clinicians in the design, test-and-learn and pilot phases of any new care delivery model. Together with Google Cloud and Verily's consumer experience and technology, we will deliver the scale needed to provide more people and their health teams access to the most cutting edge digital and analytic tools to improve their health using a simplified and seamless approach."
Highmark said that Verily would join the existing Highmark Health-Google Cloud Governance structure, which includes Verily participants in each of the Committees: Executive Committee, Joint Steering Committee, and Data Ethics and Review Board (DEAR), which its said would ensure that uses of data are consistent with prescribed ethical principles, guidance, and customer expectations.
