Health IT giant Cerner announced Monday at HIMSS18 a new collaboration with Salesforce, a customer relationship management technology vendor. Cerner is extending its population health and clinical and administration portfolio with an integrated system that combines Salesforce Health Cloud and Marketing Cloud with Cerner’s HealtheIntent, its Big Data platform.

Combined with Cerner’s data/analytic/application platform, electronic health record and other systems, the addition of Health Cloud and Marketing Cloud is designed to support enhanced consumer and provider engagement.

“We are entering the next phase of healthcare delivery transformation; this collaboration with Salesforce will bring game-changing solutions to consumers, allowing them to participate in their physician’s decision-making and engage in their own health and care,” said Zane Burke, president, Cerner. “We have digitized EHRs and are now aggregating and enriching this data for clinical and engagement insights through applied intelligence.”

The next phase of the process is to modernize the way the healthcare industry personalizes and interacts with people in their communities, Burke added. The power of these combined technologies will support an improved consumer experience and enhanced clinician communication, as well as materially advance the quality of care while reducing the total cost, he contended.

This integrated system is designed to meet healthcare providers’ growing demand for enterprisewide CRM capabilities, the companies said. The system also should support health system call centers, service operations, provider network management, marketing and other enterprise stakeholders that are transforming how services are delivered to patients and providers through a growing array of communication channels, the companies added.

Cerner is demonstrating the system and more at Booth 1832 at HIMSS18.

Cerner has arguably more big projects on its to-do list than ever, including the massive ongoing MHS Genesis project for the U.S. Department of Defense and the upcoming contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs to its continuing innovation on any number of fronts, from consumerism to the cloud, interoperability to artificial intelligence.

Last week, the company announced that at HIMSS18 it also would be showcasing its latest work with computer kingpin Apple.

“Recently, Cerner and Apple worked together to make personal health information accessible on a consumer platform, and we’re working with a range of partners and clients to turn up the heat on the conversation about interoperability,” Burke said. “We’ll showcase our collaboration with Apple to make health records available at your fingertips in the Apple Health app.”

Burke added that Cerner will also be offering a look at virtual health solutions that empower individuals to manage their health via telemedicine and remote monitoring technologies as well as intelligent solutions for hospitals as they adjust to rising costs and value-based care.

Also at HIMSS18 this week, Google is showcasing what it calls its progress toward its goal of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful through its Google Cloud Platform, G Suite and Chrome solutions, its work with customers and partners, and its focus on compliance and security.

Most especially, Google recently launched its new Cloud Healthcare API, which addresses the significant interoperability challenges in health data.

“The new API provides a robust, scalable infrastructure solution to ingest and manage key healthcare data types – including HL7, FHIR and DICOM – and lets our customers use that data for analytics and machine learning in the cloud,” Greg Moore, vice president of healthcare at Google Cloud, wrote in the company’s official blog.

As part of the company’s early access launch, it already is working with a group of clients and partners, including the team at the Stanford School of Medicine.

“Open standards are critical to healthcare interoperability as well as for enabling biomedical research,” said Somalee Datta, Stanford School of Medicine director of research IT. “We have been using the Google Cloud Genomics API for a long time and are very excited to see Google Cloud expanding its offerings to include the new Cloud Healthcare API. The ability to combine interoperability with Google Cloud’s scalable analytics will have a transformative impact on our research community.”

Google Cloud’s goal with the Cloud Healthcare API is to help transform the healthcare industry through the use of cloud technologies and machine learning. Healthcare is indeed increasingly moving to the cloud, and the adoption of machine learning will enable the industry to unlock insights that can lead to significant clinical improvements for patients, Moore wrote.

“The Cloud Healthcare API is currently available in an early access release, but over the next year, we plan to roll it out to more customers and partners,” he added.

Organizations working with Google Cloud include M*Modal, the Chilean Health Ministry, Cleveland Clinic, Rush University Medical Center, Color, Middlesex Hospital and Chapters Health System.

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Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT

Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com