Hackensack Meridian Health to Leverage Google’s New Medical Imaging Tool

October 05, 2022 - New Jersey-based Hackensack Meridian Health is set to implement Google Cloud’s newly released Medical Imaging Suite to de-identify petabytes of images to enhance the health system’s image-based clinical diagnosis capabilities.

Using the new technology, the press release states that Hackensack plans to build artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to predict metastasis in patients with prostate cancer, a life-threatening condition that disproportionately affects Black men. Research suggests that metastatic prostate cancer is also on the rise in men of all ages following recent recommendations by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) against routine prostate cancer screening.

"We are working towards building AI capabilities that will support image-based clinical diagnosis across a range of imaging, and be an integral part of our clinical workflow," said Sameer Sethi, senior vice president, and chief data and analytics officer at Hackensack Meridian Health, in the press release. "Google Cloud's imaging capabilities, including standardized storage and de-identification, are helping us unlock the value of our imaging data so clinicians and researchers are equipped with digitized decision support that fits into their clinical workflow. Google's Medical Image Suite is also fundamental to us applying AI and machine learning to this data to predict and prevent disease, helping to save more lives."

Google’s Medical Imaging Suite was announced this week with the aim of making healthcare imaging data more accessible, useful, and interoperable, the press release notes. The technology also allows healthcare organizations to develop AI and machine learning (ML) models for medical imaging. The suite includes imaging-related components for storage, labeling and annotating, dataset and dashboard creation, AI pipelines, and deployment.

Google Cloud is also partnering with global medical technology company Hologic to leverage the Medical Imaging Suite for improved cervical cancer diagnostics. Hologic recently developed a digital platform to help cytologists and pathologists identify precancerous lesions and cervical cancer cells. The platform’s capabilities will be expanded using Google Cloud’s AI capabilities and the Medical Imaging Suite, according to the press release.

The collaboration with Hackensack is Google Cloud’s latest foray into the healthcare space and comes on the heels of several recent partnerships and collaborations.

Last month, LifePoint Health and Google Cloud announced a multi-year strategic partnership in which the healthcare network would implement the tech company’s Healthcare Data Engine (HDE) to enhance data interoperability, patient monitoring, and virtual care.

In July, Google Cloud and New York-based Northwell Health collaborated to accelerate the health system’s digital transformation using cloud technology and AI with the aim of improving patient care, clinician experience, and operational efficiency.

Last year, Google Cloud and HCA Healthcare launched a partnership to enhance data analytics and clinical decision support technologies in the health system in an effort to develop innovative operational models, focus on actionable insights, and create more efficient workflows.