We're using Google's Healthcare API, and it's a big deal.

We've exciting news: 33Bondi has deployed our first custom application that uses Google Clouds' new Healthcare API.

It is exciting for a few reasons; we're enabling our client partner, a national pharmacy group, to transform the delivery of their patient-pharmacy experience by using technology from the world's most innovative information company. Also, it is a 33Bondi milestone in our ambition to be a leading independent contributor to health technology.

Google released its Cloud Healthcare API beta in April 2019, with the first official version being made public in November 2020. The power of this cloud innovation was probably not fully understood at the time by healthcare organisations. To be fair, it is probably still only achieving broader awareness with this cohort and sharing a use case in this article helps to increase that.

In our use case, we have applied Google Clouds Healthcare API to enable a mid-sized pharmacy group to affordably and iteratively create its own patient-facing, clinical-grade health services booking platform. To explain in more detail, our client partner can now screen patients online when they book a health service using a custom form. This means that before the patient arrives at the pharmacy too, for example, have their vaccination or blood glucose reading administered, the pharmacist can call up that medical information on-site. The pharmacist can check the patient's medical record for critical elements before the health service is provided.

As simple as this may sound, having a custom-built system that captures and stores patients' electronic medical records in a compliant manner represents a huge change and disruption to healthcare operations.

Why? Traditionally, mid- and enterprise-scale healthcare organisations would need to purchase external systems and applications that manage patient data because the cost of meeting the critical requirements is typically commercially unappealing. These critical requirements involve patient data storage and management and compliance and privacy regulations. Historically these would just be too costly or complex to justify within a custom, internally-managed solution.?

The genius of Google Cloud Healthcare API is that it meets the burden by directly shifting that complexity out of the healthcare organisation and putting it squarely in its managed cloud environment. Specifically, the Cloud Healthcare API meets the major versions of HL7? FHIR? standard (R4, STU3, and DSTU2), HL7? v2, and DICOM?. Existing FHIR data can be imported via APIs. In addition, existing data can be transformed from CSV/HL7v2 formats into FHIR format and, through Google's BigQuery application, SQL can be performed on FIHR, providing accessible, at scale, data analysis.

By delivering these capabilities, the Cloud Healthcare API allows healthcare organisations like our client partner to unshackle themselves from external software and system vendors. They become agile and innovative, and most importantly, they are enabled to create experiences that deliver the exact brand of patient care and operations they want to be known for. It is an excellent example of technology enabling meaningful differentiation in the healthcare market.

This type of affordable, custom and effective cloud application development will require some engineering expertise to stand up, but it no longer requires an on-premise data infrastructure environment or an expensive third party to be paid in perpetuity to provide the application.?

Healthcare organisations, like our client partner in this instance, are no longer constrained to delivering the same patient experience as their competitors, who have to choose from the same set of industry software vendors. They are no longer dependent on the product feature roadmap of an external vendor, nor the limitations or expense of their consulting services to develop out-of-the-box features.?

There are so many other benefits:

1. Unique patient experiences: healthcare organisations can now create robust integrated digital patient experiences how they want them to be designed. They are not beholden to the system design of a vendor.
2. Primary and secondary clinical data storage: healthcare organisations can now collect first-party patient data directly in their own instances, creating immense value in the context of building a better long-term patient-client relationship.
3. Proprietary insights can be developed: with their own data stores and compliant information systems, healthcare organisations can have more flexibility around how they use data for their patient's benefit. For example, a healthcare organisation may conduct their own research about their patients to identify life-saving or health-improving insights to provide back to them. This again helps to build better long-term patient-client relationships.
4. Better internal operations: healthcare stakeholders can now feasibly decide how they want to design their own patient-management information system. They can fix pain points specific to how they actually operate. While theoretically, they may have been able to do this with external vendor technology, the high cost and lack of capability meant this is often a barrier. But now, with the cost of meeting the compliance and data store standards removed from the organisation because it is being managed within Googles cloud provider, coupled with an API-driven cloud environment, a healthcare organisation can affordably architect and build a system to do precisely what stakeholders want and need - and none of what they don't want or need. In other words, a system that is genuinely fit for purpose.

All of the benefits stated above are why this piece of work is a big deal to 33 Bondi. Enabling a client to transform how they deliver on their core business: patient experiences that lead to better human health outcomes is both a privilege and a deeply satisfying creation of technology.?

While the truth is that it may take some time for an organisation to fully utilise the capability they have developed, the organisation's innovators know that they have positioned the business to be leaders in modern health services. That is where 33Bondi whats to be as a business partner; showing how it can deliver superior health outcomes through innovation.

The best news is that we are all beneficiaries when health practices modernise and deliver more actionable, personalised insights. So whether it is the humble local pharmacy group getting closer to its customers as patients through better and interoperable health data, a hospital, medical practice group, dental, optical or health startup, the future becomes brighter for all communities.?

Innovation like Google Cloud Healthcare API and engineering companies like 33Bondi are driving the democratisation of digital health technology. We're proud to be contributors. This will unequivocally lead to healthier communities. It is why we've updated our mission and focused on health technology.

Steven Muller, Co-Founder, 33 Bondi