Apollo Hospitals is expanding its partnership with Google Cloud to bring comprehensive healthcare services to every corner of India. Utilizing Google Cloud’s technology, Apollo 24|7 offers telemedicine, online consultations, medication delivery, and enhanced clinical decision-making. Key features include an AI-powered Clinical Intelligence Engine, AskApollo patient navigation, and a modernized cloud platform. Google and Apollo are also collaborating to provide reliable healthcare information on Google Search, ultimately improving healthcare accessibility and engagement for millions of Indians while ensuring data privacy and responsible AI use.
Apollo Hospitals is expanding its collaboration with Google Cloud to enhance healthcare accessibility throughout India. This initiative aims to empower every Indian with Apollo’s digital platform, Apollo 24|7, to bridge the healthcare gap, especially in underserved rural areas.
The Apollo 24|7 platform, entirely built on Google Cloud, offers a comprehensive healthcare experience, including telemedicine services, online doctor consultations, medication delivery, and enhanced clinical decision-making. Key aspects of this expanded partnership include:
1. AI-Powered Clinical Decision Support System: Apollo 24|7 and Google Cloud have jointly developed a Clinical Intelligence Engine (CIE) utilizing Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and generative AI models. This innovative tool assists doctors in determining the most appropriate course of action during patient consultations. Importantly, all patient data remains securely within the hospital’s systems.
2. AskApollo Patient-Facing Service: The platform powers AskApollo, a unique service that aids patients in navigating their healthcare journey. AskApollo relies on Apollo’s CIE, developed from extensive clinical data collected over 40 years and analyzed using Google Cloud’s advanced AI and machine learning technologies. Additionally, they are exploring the use of Med-PaLM 2, an LLM developed by Google, for medical knowledge and answering clinical queries.
3. Scalable Cloud Platform: Apollo 24|7, India’s largest and fastest-growing health platform, has been modernized and made highly scalable with Google Cloud’s assistance. Collaborating with Google Cloud partner Searce, Apollo 24|7’s engineering teams deployed multiple microservices and databases on Google Cloud seamlessly. The data lake is hosted on Google BigQuery, enabling better decision-making and clinical outcomes by consolidating data.
4. Healthcare Information on Google Search: Google and Apollo Hospitals are working together to provide authoritative and helpful health information on Google Search. This collaboration leverages Google’s AI capabilities and Apollo’s extensive healthcare expertise to make diagnoses more accessible, accurate, and affordable for individuals.
Shobana Kamineni, Vice Chairperson of Apollo Hospitals, emphasized the importance of this partnership in addressing the challenge of access to timely and accurate health information in India. She highlighted the potential for medical-grade generative AI and technology-driven compassion to revolutionize patient care.
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, acknowledged the transformative potential of generative AI in healthcare and its ability to benefit both clinicians and patients. He expressed confidence that the collaboration with Apollo Hospitals would enhance healthcare accessibility, support healthcare providers, and increase patient engagement for millions of Indians.
Google Cloud’s stringent data governance and privacy policies ensure that customers retain control over their data, particularly in healthcare settings. Patient data access and utilization are safeguarded through Google Cloud’s secure infrastructure and data storage, in alignment with each customer’s security and privacy controls. Additionally, Google’s responsible approach to generative AI enables customers to monitor and review model outputs, with the availability of safety guardrails and model documentation for responsible use in specific customer use cases and contexts.
