Kasna builds Ramsay Health Care's new data hub on Google Cloud

Mantel Group’s Kasna has been tapped by hospital operator Ramsay Health Care to help build a data hub based on Google Cloud’s enterprise data warehouse BigQuery.

The deal is part of Ramsay’s wider agreement with Google Cloud aimed to improve its clinical care with AI and machine learning technology, as well as providing staff better access to patient data.

Ramsay Data Hub, through the serverless BigQuery, aims to securely and cost-effectively ingest, store, and analyse both real-time data as well as large volumes of diverse, raw data to deliver insights-driven business transformation.

“We are privileged to collaborate with Ramsay Health Care and Google Cloud in a remarkable digital transformation journey,” Kasna chief executive Simon Poulton said.

“With our extensive experience in deploying Google Cloud in highly regulated environments, we are uniquely positioned to accelerate Ramsay's ambitious goals of leveraging their vast amount of data."

"Together, we can make a positive impact on the lives of Australians through evidence-based insights."

Ramsay said the Data Hub will be a critical component in delivering on the health care provider’s 2030 digital strategy.

The company’s data previously sat in separate on-premise locations, which made analysis and insights extraction a time-intensive and cumbersome process.

“Data and AI can have a profound impact on reimagining health care and solving some of our most pressing challenges," Ramsay Health Care group chief digital and data officer Dr Rachna Gandhi said.

“With Google Cloud, we’re taking an insights-driven approach to transforming how we deliver clinical care—everything from optimising patient care and experiences to identifying trends and supporting better decisions about treatments.”

Ramsay will also deploy Google Cloud’s Apigee API Management, and Anthos Service Mesh solutions to better support data interoperability, helping the company support health care data protocols that define how information can be securely managed and accessed within and between facilities.

Gandhi said that by working with Google Cloud to build Ramsay's data foundation, the health care organisation is gaining a deeper understanding of what is happening across the company itself.

He added Google Cloud was also selected for data security reasons.

“With Google Cloud, data is encrypted end-to-end, allowing us to create innovative solutions that strictly comply with regulations and protect privacy,” Gandhi said.

“All data is encrypted by default at rest and in-flight and we are using our own encryption keys to further protect the sensitive confidential health information."

"No one accesses our patient data except us. For health care providers, that is non-negotiable.”

Other solutions Ramsay will be building with Google Cloud include ways to better analyse clinical notes, use AI algorithms to provide faster and more accurate clinical coding, and improve demand forecasting.

“The creation of a centralised data hub means that Ramsay can improve connectivity, operationalise data, and unlock new insights to truly help its patients and clinicians," Google Cloud ANZ vice president Alister Dias said.

This is also a great example of how AI in healthcare can not only help drive efficiencies, but also have broad societal impact," Dias added.