How MEDITECH is integrating Gemini into highly regulated healthcare workflows

Snapshot:

• 7 hours saved per employee per week with Gemini

• Improved job satisfaction as team members can focus on more strategic projects

• Faster, simpler access to complex industry information with Gemini summarization

Origin story

In their earliest days, electronic health record (EHR) platforms were so complicated and cumbersome that they were only used by organizations with the resources to maintain enormous servers. These platforms are now fast-moving decision-making tools and are must-haves for healthcare teams. MEDITECH provides an enterprise EHR solution that supports healthcare customers of all sizes — from four-bed care facilities to integrated delivery networks with thousands of care sites — across more than 23 countries.

Serving all of our customers, regardless of their size, requires us to be efficient and able to easily communicate across our company. In 2012, we strategically transitioned from a proprietary collaboration suite to Google Workspace, a cloud-based solution. Recognizing its potential to help transform the way we work and the familiarity our team already had with it in their personal lives, we embraced this technological shift. Since then, MEDITECH has experienced significant growth and evolution in tandem with Workspace.

The switch to Google Workspace and Gemini

I’ve been with MEDITECH for 30 years now, and it’s my job to ensure our staff members have the tools they need to succeed. As interest grew around integrating generative AI into our internal workflows, it fell to me to explore our options. Introducing new technology into MEDITECH's ecosystem is especially complicated due to the highly regulated nature of our industry, and we’re committed to complying with data privacy and security regulations. Gemini is a covered service under our BAA with Google, meaning internal data will be private and won’t be used to train the AI model. Having this assurance made choosing Gemini a no brainer.

Working closely with Google Cloud Premier Partner, Onix, we started our Gemini rollout with a trial group of users spread across different teams and divisions. We wanted to ensure that a wide range of responsibilities were represented in the sample group, and those users all had several use cases that they wanted to test. Onix was instrumental in supporting these users throughout the trial period; they had a dedicated Google Site that offered learning tips and tricks, as well as training and transformation lab recordings to empower our teams to push the limits of what Gemini could do for us.

Our team created a spreadsheet to track each division’s use cases, specific feedback on Gemini’s features, and any results from the tests. We found that we were able to save an average of seven hours per employee per week by reducing some manual tasks such as notetaking during meetings or drafting and revising emails and documents. One common use case that saves time across our teams is the ability to automatically summarize our Google Meet calls. 

We’re also using Gemini to keep our teams up to date on things like industry trends. We’re constantly reviewing new healthcare regulations and industry research in order to stay ahead of compliance requirements or potential opportunities. And now employees are using Gemini to rapidly consolidate, summarize, and distribute that news through Google Chat, so we can ensure all of our teams are well-informed and equipped to build the best possible solutions for our customers.

Looking ahead

When I showed our leadership team the results of our Gemini trial, our president and CEO just said, “Adopting Gemini is the right thing to do.” Since then, we’ve been able to roll out Gemini to our entire organization, and we’re seeing new use cases every day. One of our developers recently shared that he’s scheduling Meet calls with himself to share his new ideas out loud, asking Gemini to take notes for him, and by the end of the call, he’ll have a summarized, organized version of his thoughts. 

Our teams overall are feeling more satisfied with their jobs because they’re able to automate these more mundane tasks and focus on innovation. I’m excited to see how this energy trickles down into our products and the many new ways we’ll be able to support our customers.