Google Cloud Expands Healthcare AI Partnerships to Address Burnout & Improve Care Delivery

Each partnership centers on integrating generative AI into daily workflows to help healthcare providers access complex clinical information faster, enhance decision-making, and improve patient experiences.

At its Google Cloud Next 2025 event in Las Vegas, Google Cloud announced a significant expansion of its healthcare partnerships, deepening collaborations with several major health systems in the U.S.

The new alliances underscore the company's commitment to equipping clinicians, nurses, and administrators with AI-powered tools to manage increasing workloads, reduce burnout, and streamline patient care.

As part of its latest efforts, Google Cloud is partnering with Highmark Health, Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH), and Seattle Children's Hospital. 

Each partnership centers on integrating generative AI into daily workflows to help healthcare providers access complex clinical information faster, enhance decision-making, and improve patient experiences.

Addressing Industry-Wide Challenges Through AI

The healthcare industry in the United States is grappling with growing complexities, including staff shortages, increasing burnout among frontline workers, and rising demand for timely, high-quality patient care.

Google Cloud's approach aims to address these challenges by embedding generative AI tools directly into the workflows of hospitals and health systems.

Richard Clarke, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Highmark Health noted that AI has already begun to make a measurable impact across the organization. 

"We've rolled out generative AI tools to over 14,000 of our 40,000 employees and recently crossed one million prompts," Clarke said during a press briefing. 

He highlighted how multimodal AI advancements—especially with Google's Imagen, a text-to-image model—have enabled the team to revisit and optimize existing solutions.

Clarke emphasized that the rapid pace of AI development means teams can often find new solutions simply by waiting for the next update.

"There's rarely a day that goes by without a staff member sharing a new use case—whether it's converting research articles into audio files or using AI for content translation," he added. 

According to Clarke, AI is emerging as a "force multiplier" across the enterprise, delivering more usability and practical applications than ever before.

Hackensack Meridian Health: AI-Powered Efficiency in Clinical Settings

Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey's largest non-profit healthcare provider, is also investing heavily in AI through its partnership with Google Cloud. 

Sameer Sethi, Senior Vice President and Chief AI Officer at HMH, detailed how the health system is embedding AI into clinical and administrative workflows.

Sethi explained that the organization is developing tools to reduce the strain on healthcare workers, particularly in post-operative and nursing workflows. 

These include AI-powered agents that follow up with patients after surgery, conduct automated assessments, and flag issues for clinical teams. 

"We've created systems where AI can call patients post-procedure, collect information, generate next steps, and alert aftercare teams accordingly," he said.

In addition, HMH uses natural language processing (NLP) to scan structured and unstructured patient data rapidly, allowing researchers and clinicians to arrive at clinical hypotheses more efficiently. 

The organization is also working on a nurse assistant agent capable of sifting through large volumes of patient data to support decision-making and reduce workload.

Sethi emphasized that the health system is focused not only on healthcare delivery but also on innovation, research, and education. 

"We're integrating AI into our research division and medical school to help identify disease signals early and transition patients to appropriate care settings," he said.

Seattle Children's Hospital: Generative AI in Pediatric Care

Seattle Children's Hospital ranked among the top pediatric hospitals in the U.S., has partnered with Google Cloud to develop the Pathway Assistant—an AI-powered tool designed to help healthcare professionals access clinical guidance faster.

Pathway Assistant is built using Google's Gemini models and was developed in close collaboration with over 50 clinicians and researchers. It integrates large volumes of data from Clinical Standard Work (CSW) Pathways—evidence-based guidelines used for diagnosing and treating pediatric conditions. 

With more than 70 conditions documented, the CSW model has served as a foundation for over 40 similar programs nationwide.

According to Dr. Darren Migita, Medical Director of Clinical Effectiveness at Seattle Children's, the assistant acts as a digital consultant. 

"It's like having a trusted expert by your side, providing real-time access to the collective knowledge of clinicians who authored the care pathways," Migita said.

The assistant uses multimodal capabilities to process text, images, and up-to-date medical literature, reducing the time needed to research a condition from 15 minutes to just a few seconds. 

This speed and precision help clinicians make informed decisions more quickly, which can have a direct impact on patient outcomes.

Aashima Gupta, Global Director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud, emphasized the initiative's broader goal, saying, "The volume and complexity of healthcare guidelines can overwhelm providers. This project aims to simplify access to the right information at the point of care, improving both provider experience and patient outcomes."

The Role of Generative AI in Healthcare Transformation

While still in the early stages, these collaborations highlight the growing role of generative AI in modernizing healthcare systems. From streamlining administrative functions to supporting clinical diagnosis, the applications of AI are expanding rapidly.

Google Cloud's partnerships aim to address systemic inefficiencies impacting patients and healthcare professionals.

By incorporating AI into clinical environments, organizations can reduce human error, enhance communication, and improve care coordination. Moreover, these AI solutions are being designed with scalability and integration in mind. 

For example, Highmark Health is exploring generative AI to create interactive training content, while Hackensack Meridian is building AI tools to automate clinical note summarization—reducing time spent on documentation and freeing clinicians to focus more on patients.

Google Cloud emphasized that its healthcare AI offerings are being developed with data security, scalability, and compliance at the core. 

By working closely with leading healthcare institutions, the company aims to develop purpose-built tools that meet the specific needs of clinicians and administrators in real-world settings.

Stay tuned for more such updates on Digital Health News.