Ramsay Health Care to stand up central data hub, AI

Ramsay Health Care is bringing in Google Cloud under a 2030 digital transformation strategy, standing up a central data hub and developing AI-based tools.

The Australia-based private hospital operator said it hoped the outputs of the agreement would result in improved clinical care.

“By analysing vast amounts of patient data - vital signs, labs, notes, and more - the hospital’s AI algorithms will help spot patterns and risk factors to help doctors more effectively diagnose conditions,” it said in a statement.

The operator plans to stand up a “centralised data hub” for its “more than 70 hospitals, clinics, and surgical centres across the country”. Currently, data is held “in separate on-premise locations”.

The Ramsay Data Hub will be built by the healthcare operator, Google Cloud and Kasna, using BigQuery.

The hub “will allow Ramsay to securely and cost-effectively ingest, store, and analyse both real-time data as well as large volumes of diverse, raw data to deliver insights-driven business transformation,” the firms said in a statement.

Ramsay also intends to deploy Google Cloud’s Apigee API Management, and Anthos Service Mesh solutions to support data interoperability and “define how information can be securely managed and accessed within and between facilities, opening up more opportunities to improve patient care.”

In addition, it is now developing some AI-based tools, for applications including analysing clinical notes, to optimise clinical coding, and to improve demand forecasting “to ensure medications do not go to waste, and [to] enable more systematic allocation of procedures to optimise theatre and staff utilisation”.