Google’s Verily Partners with Emory Healthcare to Drive Efficiency

December 31, 2019 - Emory Healthcare and Verily, a healthcare entity owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, are collaborating to develop new solutions that will help improve cost-effectiveness, operational efficiency and quality.

The partnership will combine Emory Healthcare’s capabilities as an academic medical center with Verily’s expertise in data analytics, science, and user experience. The organizations will initially focus on analyzing existing medication and lab ordering patterns at Emory, which will help identify value opportunities and drive organizational change.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Verily on ways to leverage ‘big data’ responsibly and focus on implementation science to critically improve the quality, safety and value of care we provide,” said Jonathan S. Lewin, MD, president and CEO, Emory Healthcare.

“We look forward to unlocking new insights that can help our team increase efficiency and enable us to deliver the best diagnosis and treatment of patients at the point of care.”

This new partnership will build on Verily’s past efforts to use data and analytics to improve cost-effectiveness in healthcare. In December 2018, the company partnered with Walgreens Boots Alliance to improve chronic disease management and reduce healthcare spending.

The partnership will take a data-driven approach to exploring how emerging analytics technologies can improve outcomes without increasing costs.

“We’re focused on finding innovative ways to deliver better patient care at lower costs, and working with the right healthcare partners to help bring new services and solutions to our patients and customers,” said Stefano Pessina, chief executive officer, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.

“The continued rise in chronic diseases today can be costly to patients as well as to our healthcare system. Working with Verily, we’ll look at how we can best support integrated and value-based care to meet our patients’ needs, as well as opportunities to address other chronic conditions over time.”

Verily also recently announced the launch of a data-driven opioid treatment center. In partnership with regional healthcare providers, including Kettering Health Network and Premier Health, Verily will offer treatment, tools, and resources to individuals with substance abuse needs.

“Americans under 50 years old are more likely to die from an unintended overdose than any other cause, and two-thirds of those deaths involve an opioid. In 2017, 115 people died each day from opioid overdoses in the United States and that number continues to rise,” Danielle Schlosser, Senior Clinical Scientist, Behavioral Health at Verily, wrote at the time.

“We are in the midst of a public health emergency. At Verily, we are focused on making health information useful so people can live healthier lives, and in the face of one of the greatest public health crises the US has seen, we feel compelled to act.”

Through this new partnership with Emory Healthcare, Verily will continue to advance healthcare with innovative data and analytics tools.

“As physicians, we can improve what we can measure,” said Vivian Lee, MD, president of health platforms, Verily.

“This initiative will put actionable data in the hands of teams on the front lines of care delivery. Emory Healthcare is already on the forefront of harnessing data to improve healthcare quality and innovation. We look forward to learning from this impressive partner and to deploying new solutions to old problems.”