The news: Google Cloud and Epic reached an agreement to let Epic’s health system customers move their workloads to the cloud. Google announced this week that Hackensack Meridian Health, an Epic client, will start the shift.
How we got here: The deal marks the first step in allowing health systems that use Epic to move their systems to Google Cloud. For Epic, it’s a change in business strategy from 2020, when the electronic health system (EHR) vendor stopped working with Google Cloud, saying its hospital clients weren’t showing enough interest to merit the investment.
The tie-up’s significance: Provider organizations are migrating to the cloud to ingest and analyze large quantities of healthcare data. The shift away from data centers and toward the cloud also facilitates easier connections of disparate systems compared with using individual servers.
The EHR allure: Healthcare cloud vendors want to strike deals with EHR vendors because they come with preexisting hospital clients. The bigger the EHR company, the better it is for the cloud provider.
Closing the gap in the cloud market: Google has struggled to reel in EHR companies—but having Epic back in the mix should be a springboard to help it catch up to Big Tech rivals.
This article originally appeared in Insider Intelligence's Digital Health Briefing—a daily recap of top stories reshaping the healthcare industry. Subscribe to have more hard-hitting takeaways delivered to your inbox daily.