Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

healthcareitnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 259 posts

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#151

Post by taurath »

leoh wrote: post #140

Google is absolutely doing the right thing. Anything that can be done to enhance the efficacy of EMR software will help lead to better patient outcomes. As far as I can tell, Google is approaching the problem foremost from the perspective of "how can we make people healthier by making software more effective." Epic and Cerner are simply not doing that. Somewhere in the comments here someone mentioned that most EMR so…

> if Google doesn't misuse the data/people aren't unreasonably paranoid about data misuse

It’s pretty hard to trust google from where I’m standing right now. So many incentives to do the wrong thing.

Edit - I can’t help but to say they are still better than most... at least for now. They should get some credit for their track record. It’d just be nice to know how their incentives are still aligned to the end consumers, and how to know how that would change.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#153

Post by goatinaboat »

leoh wrote: post #140

Google is absolutely doing the right thing. Anything that can be done to enhance the efficacy of EMR software will help lead to better patient outcomes. As far as I can tell, Google is approaching the problem foremost from the perspective of "how can we make people healthier by making software more effective." Epic and Cerner are simply not doing that. Somewhere in the comments here someone mentioned that most EMR so…

problem foremost from the perspective of "how can we make people healthier by making software more effective."

The perspective of “how can we extract and exploit more personal data”, FTFY.

We are long past the point of giving Google any benefit of the doubt. They keep attempting to exfiltrate data from the NHS as well.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#154

Post by Jabbles »

semerda wrote: post #115

Epic is a cash cow private company. Sutter Health in the Bay Area paid $1B for its EHR. Epic stays quiet to protect its walled gardens; deeply integrated into hospital infrastructure. No doubt Google is a threat to them. Here’s an old article I found that references this juicy revenue opportunity (the rest have been cleared by Epic, so the story goes): https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/setback-sutter-after-1...

That suggests that they believe Amazon will never be a competitor/threat. A lot of dead companies have thought that.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#155

Post by raxxorrax »

leoh wrote: post #140

Google is absolutely doing the right thing. Anything that can be done to enhance the efficacy of EMR software will help lead to better patient outcomes. As far as I can tell, Google is approaching the problem foremost from the perspective of "how can we make people healthier by making software more effective." Epic and Cerner are simply not doing that. Somewhere in the comments here someone mentioned that most EMR so…

The problem I have with this is the simple fact, that an ad company can never know my medical history. Intentions and benefits aside, this is not solvable by Google.

> people aren't unreasonably paranoid about data misuse

Is this a joke? Google is an ad company. And if I look at the US, I think there are periphery problems here.

What really improves the situation in the medical field are large databases of indications.

A remote city or village has a few general practitioners. They cannot know about any form of illness that has been indentified. To help them, they need an information infrastructure to support them for diagnostics. That would help people and might save lives.

> We haven't even begun to talk about the potential for machine learning

Then you just have to ask patients if they want to share their data. That is not asking to much. Until then medical data should be protected.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#157

Post by tixocloud »

jsperx wrote: post #129
commandar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They pick Azure because somewhere along the line the mid- and upper-level managers, including director-level IT people, have been made to believe that anything other than Windows is insecure and not suitable for HIPAA. I'd argue it's less because of a belief that a non-Windows environment is inherently insecure and more that Microsoft very aggressively promotes their products as being compliant with regulations like…

“Director-level IT” healthcare person here. We use AWS but are evaluating Azure because of the way Microsoft includes VDI in the form of Windows 10 Multi-Session licenses available only with Azure+Windows Virtual Desktop. Classic Microsoft bundle approach. Oh, and Slack is available with HIPAA compliance — https://slack.com/help/articles/360020685594-slack-and-hipaa Also, as someone who actively shops for SaaS offeri…

Side note: interesting point on trying services with low cost/stakes pilot/prototype. How would you expect to try things out? Would it be similar to online demos that many other SaaS companies employ?

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#158

Post by codred »

Major part of Google Health team came from Deep Mind. We have a lot of doctors and people used to work for NHS. Our goal to help doctors, nurses in their work, save patients lives and revolutionise the industry. We are complient with privicy regulations and see huge potential in what we do. Majority of negative comments are driven by fear of Google selling data for targeted adds but in all our agreements with trust we clearly state our goals and practices. I'd rather people concentrate on positive side and huge potentials in front of us instead of FUD.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#159

Post by warent »

echelon wrote: post #144
stygiansonic wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to a doctor at Stanford and he mentioned to me one reason why the main Stanford Health and Stanford Children's Health have separate patient portals (not unified) that you have to create separate logins for is because of the huge amount Epic wanted to charge to merge them. (They both run separate Epic instances as far as I can tell)

How are leeches like this tolerated? The sooner they are driven out of business, the better.

They're not entirely tolerated fortunately. The US government has been taking action to tear down EHR walled gardens via the Cures Act[1] which is manifesting in public access APIs called FHIR.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Cures_Act

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#160

Post by inscrutable »

There seems to be major disengenuousness on behalf of EPIC and Cerner, and some ignorance on behalf of WSJ.

GCP != Google Health, at least for the purposes of patient privacy. If you hold the encryption keys, google can't do anything, or am I wrong in that assumption?

It is fine, and expected, to rule out GCP for storing your own records for competitive reasons (e.g. choosing them would make future Google Health integrations easier). It is also expected, if not quite fine, to try to actively prevent your customers from using GCP.

Cerner seemed happy to play a few rounds of golf with Eric Schmidt regarding using GCP, presumably to try to glean insight into Google Health, while EPIC flat out refused a meeting. Cerner then helpfully provided a misleading quote to the WSJ to help spread FUD.

Post reply on HN