What You Should Know:
– DaVita Inc. and Google Cloud are teaming up to create a new clinical operating system that sets a foundation for streamlined kidney care for more than 200,000 DaVita patients.
– Built on Google Cloud infrastructure and utilizing AI and analytics tools co-developed by the two companies, DaVita’s Center Without Walls (CWOW) is now live across the organization’s 2,700+ dialysis centers nationwide.
– With the deployment, DaVita has moved from a decentralized clinical documentation system to a unified platform that leverages data from more than 30 million dialysis treatments per year to generate insights designed to help improve clinical outcomes.
Customized Clinical Operating System Designed to Transform Kidney Care
CKD affects more than 1 in 7 adults in the United States, an estimated 37 million Americans, and as many as 9 in 10 adults who have CKD are not aware they have the disease2. Currently, an estimated 50% of people diagnosed with kidney failure “crash” into dialysis—starting treatment without warning in an emergency situation3. Crashing not only causes physical and emotional stress for patients but also it costs, on average, an additional $53,000 per patient in the first year of dialysis treatment.
By creating CWOW using Google Cloud, DaVita has built a foundational platform that will enable seamless data sharing and increase collaboration between the company’s physician partners, hospitals, and internal care teams. Ultimately, the platform is designed to support DaVita’s mission to provide integrated kidney care that helps improve patient quality of life, and lower the cost of care. To effectively leverage this data, DaVita built CWOW on Cloud Spanner for scalable database management, BigQuery for analytics, and Vertex AI for AI and machine learning.
“Google is the right choice for DaVita – not only from a technical perspective, but also from a collaboration standpoint,” said Alan Cullop, DaVita’s Chief Information Officer. “Our vision for CWOW required a flexible collaborator that would be willing to iterate as we worked to address the unique needs of DaVita and kidney care. From early-stage architecture and infrastructure conversations, to AI, analytics and IT security, Google has added significant value every step of the way, and we look forward to the next stage of innovation as we continue to enhance the CWOW platform.”
