Artificial intelligence has incredible potential to transform care delivery, and the tech giant Google is partnering with providers to gather evidence on the most effective ways to implement the technology, according to a recent Modern Healthcare article.
Michael Howell, M.D., Google’s chief health officer, said his company aspires to establish a “safe testing harness” and conduct research to offer insights into the best ways to leverage AI in the healthcare field. Like other prominent tech companies (e.g., Apple, Amazon and Microsoft), Google is investing in partnerships with health systems to advance the adoption of AI solutions in clinical settings and enhance both provider and patient experiences.
Google Partners with Providers to Advance Safe, Responsible AI Adoption
Not long after large language models (LLMs) exploded in popularity following OpenAI’s introduction of ChatGPT, Google began exploring the clinical potential of conversational AI. The company introduced Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer (AMIE), “a research AI system based on a LLM and optimized for diagnostic reasoning and conversations,” according to a blog post.
“We trained and evaluated AMIE along many dimensions that reflect quality in real-world clinical consultations from the perspective of both clinicians and patients,” research leads Alan Karthikesalingam and Vivek Natarajan wrote in the post.
To determine where AI can have the most significant impact on operations and outcomes, Google more recently has joined forces with various companies in the healthcare field, including digital health companies and health systems. For example, in February 2026, the tech behemoth announced a partnership with Included Health — a telemedicine service provider — to conduct a nationwide randomized controlled study to determine the effect of conversational AI in real-world virtual care workflows.
“This new research will build upon our foundational research on the use of AI for diagnostic and management reasoning, personalized health insights and navigating health information,” research leads Mike Schaekermann and Cameron Chen wrote in a blog post.
The study expands Google’s previous research investigating the potential AI has to enhance virtual care delivery: First, a couple of years ago, the company refined AI to the point that it could pass the medical licensing exam administered to human physicians Actors acting as patients with heart failure or breast cancer tested the conversational AI’s capabilities
Google then worked with Harvard University to conduct a study in which 120 actual patients chatted with the AI, with physicians on standby ready to jump in if necessary: “The results from that were quite good,” Howell told Modern Healthcare.
Google has also worked with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Howell explained how Google Research and Google DeepMind investigations into AI discovery and clinical applications of the technology have supported Mayo’s efforts to enhance care: “Radiotherapy is a good example. We make that available for other people to use, or to build on top of. We’ve done some of that collaboration with Mayo over the years.”
A Mayo Clinic study confirmed the potential AI developed with Google Health has to improve efficiency and standardization of radiotherapy planning for patients with head and neck cancers.
“According to survey data collected after each review case, the deep-learning model produced contours that were ready for clinical use with minor to no revisions 90% of the time, compared to 53% of the time for manual contours, and reduced the overall contouring and process time by 76%,” a 2023 Mayo press release states.
The impact of the collaboration goes beyond radiotherapy. As part of a 10-year partnership with Google announced in 2019 to create a framework for the ethical utilization of clinical data, Mayo gained access to Google’s AI toolsets, security experience and engineering expertise, according to a case study on the partnership published in 2022 by the National Academy of Medicine. Their alliance supports the Mayo Clinic Cloud and the Mayo Clinic Platform, a solution that allows the health system to share a subset of de-identified clinical data with others.
“With algorithms permitted into the enclave and data never leaving the home institution, the Mayo-Google partnership illustrates an approach to how health systems and technology companies can partner to facilitate knowledge generation while addressing privacy and cybersecurity concerns,” the case study abstract states. “It also promotes data collaboration and knowledge generation by off-setting the costs of procuring, managing, and storing large amounts of data needed for algorithmic development.”
Other healthcare providers have leveraged Google Cloud and Gemini models to efficiently surface relevant information to clinicians at the bedsideuried in binders and PDFs more easily accessible in vital moments
Tech Giants Accelerate Healthcare AI Initiatives
This trend goes beyond Google and its provider partners. To explore the potential of AI to support the efficient delivery of high-quality, personalized care, other large tech companies have invested in AI models tailored to make an impact in clinical settings.
Last month, Microsoft and Mayo Clinic announced plans to combine Microsoft’s AI, cloud, engineering and superintelligence reinical data and expertise to craft a healthcare-focused AI model. Microsoft intends to make the Mayo-owned model available implementing high-level AI capabilities for care delivery
Amazon has also thrown its hat into the healthcare AI provider ring: In March 2026, Amazon Web Services debuted Amazon Connect Health, an agentic AI solution for healthcare providers. With capabilities like conversational patient identity verification and appointment management, the platform helped one health system shift 630 hours per week from patient verification to direct assistance.
Exploring Opportunities for Innovation Safely and Responsibly
Ultimately, those working to enhance care delivery with AI have to balance progress and innovation with safety, responsibility and prudent decision-making supported by reliable data. For example, Mayo created the Health Data and Technology Advisory (DaTA) Board in 2021 to provide perspectives and opinions from a diverse group of Mayo patients on the impact AI and health technology applications will have on individual patients as well as the broader community, according to the National Academy of Medicine case study.
Google has also taken a phased and gradual approach to ensure safe and responsible AI deployment in healthcare settings, scaling its efforts methodically as it gathers more information about the technology’s impact.
“We believe it’s really important to build the evidence base for where AI works, and where it doesn’t,” Howell told Modern Healthcare.
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