Huma collaborates with Google Cloud to improve healthcare through generative AI

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• Huma aims to further support patients and the healthcare workforce by enhancing its regulated Software as Medical Device (SaMD) platform with the addition of generative AI applications
• Huma is leveraging Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform and exploring the use of other Google GenAI tools such as Med-PaLM 2
• Huma and Google Cloud are pursuing the safe, responsible and meaningful integration of generative AI in healthcare

NEW YORK, Aug. 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Huma Therapeutics ("Huma"), a leading global digital health company, today announced it will use Google Cloud's generative AI (GenAI) to enhance Huma's regulated disease management platform. Huma is also exploring the use of Google's GenAI tools, including Med-PaLM 2, a large language model specialised for the medical domain, to support healthcare professionals (HCPs) with better insights to optimise care delivery.

Huma's technology platform captures a range of vital signs, biomarkers and patient-reported data that are displayed on an HCP dashboard. This allows HCPs to care for many more patients than they would be able to in person, helping to alleviate workforce pressures and expand access to healthcare¹. There are additional, significant efficiencies to be gained by reducing administrative tasks that take away valuable time from delivering patient-centric care and GenAI will be used to automate the generation of clinical summary reports from incoming data and surface relevant information for review in order to improve the documentation and triaging processes.

Huma's platform gathers a wealth of real-world data that hold crucial clinical insights related to disease progression, deterioration, and potential new diagnoses. However, these insights can sometimes go unnoticed. Combining GenAI with human oversight has the potential to harness the full transformative power of this data and deliver the predictive, personalised care that will greatly benefit both health systems and patients. 

GenAI will also help solve the challenge of patient engagement. Chronic disease management is intricate, and patients need support and guidance to navigate through complex treatment pathways. Yet, there is limited access to care providers. By leveraging GenAI, communication between patients and providers can be streamlined, allowing individually tailored care plans and personalised "nudges," —ultimately delivering a more delightful patient experience which can lead to improved outcomes. 

A Huma-n in the loop

Huma is well positioned to evaluate the value GenAI applications can bring to healthcare in a safe manner with a "human in the loop"— in this case, a qualified nurse or a clinician who can assess, validate, and adjust any AI outputs with appropriate guardrails in place. Huma's platform currently uses AI models to analyse patient data and provide insights that can help clinicians make better decisions.

Now, with Google Cloud's Vertex AI and other GenAI tools, Huma can develop a pipeline of use cases to make the platform even more impactful for providers and patients to drive better care delivery and outcomes.

Dan Vahdat, Huma CEO & Founder, said: "Huma is committed to making healthcare accessible and affordable for everyone and GenAI will play a crucial role in this equitable access. Our new GenAI applications will help mitigate the pressures on the healthcare workforce that exist worldwide and will reduce burnout in overworked staff. We are committed to the safe and responsible introduction of GenAI into healthcare and will ensure that Huma-ns are kept in the loop, meaning that HCPs will retain control of these health technologies."

Aashima Gupta, global director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions, Google Cloud, said: "In a world where healthcare professionals are constantly striving to provide the best care for their patients, GenAI can be a valuable ally to lighten the load. It is not about just reducing cognitive burden; but also enhancing the personalisation of care. By incorporating AI into its disease management platform, Huma can empower its experts to focus on more complex tasks by automating repetitive ones. For example, gen AI can generate draft responses to member inquiries and requests, which Huma's experts can then review and edit as needed. This frees up Huma's experts to spend more time on tasks that require human judgement and expertise. This approach, which involves human oversight, ensures that GenAI capabilities are safe and effective."

Dr Mert Aral, Chief Medical Officer, Huma, said: "Capacity constraints, compounded by staff shortages, continue to be critical challenges across healthcare systems. As a pioneer in digital health, it is incumbent on Huma to help where it can. We are tremendously excited about this partnership and the opportunity to explore how we can harness the power of Med-PaLM 2, assessing it across different use cases to drive better triaging and care optimisation for patients. At the same time, it is paramount that these AI tools are implemented in a responsible and safe manner. Cross-sectoral collaboration will be the key to unlocking this immense potential, ushering in a new era of care delivery that is more efficient, effective and deeply Huma-n-centric."

References

1.  Po-Yin Yen et al, (2018)  Nurses' Time Allocation and Multitasking of Nursing Activities: A Time Motion Study AMIA Annu Symp Proc.: 1137–1146

About Huma

Huma Therapeutics is a global digital health technology company that advances digital-first care delivery and research to help people live longer, fuller lives. Its award-winning modular platforms are used by more than 3,000 hospitals and clinics, with over 31.5 million active users in healthcare and over 650,000 participants across research.

Huma's technology powers:

• multi-channel patient engagement at population-wide scale for healthcare systems
• remote patient monitoring (RPM) at scale
• companion apps to support patients through treatment and drug therapies
• digital clinical trials, including decentralised trials, to accelerate medical research

Huma's regulated Software as a Medical Device, used in its RPM and companion app platforms, is the only disease- and device- agnostic platform to hold EU MDR Class IIb, US FDA (510-k) Class II clearance and Class IIb registration with the UK MHRA. The SaMD platform is regulated to accept artificial intelligence algorithms and monitor patients of all ages. 
Please visit www.huma.com and follow us on LinkedIn at Huma

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Media contact

Karen Birmingham PhD
Head of PR & Communications, Huma
[email protected]