Mayo Clinic partners with Google's health-data sibling on 'GPS for patient care'

Mayo Clinic is partnering with Verily, a business unit of Google's parent company, to create point-of-care technology to help doctors make decisions on patient treatment options.

Financial terms of the two-year strategic collaboration were not disclosed.

"The exponential growth in medical discovery and knowledge has reached the point where it is almost impossible for caregivers to keep up with the latest advances," Dr. Bradley Leibovich, medical director of Mayo Clinic's Center for Digital Health, said in a news release.

"This tool will make Mayo Clinic's deep expertise available to care teams so that they can have concise, relevant and applicable answers to clinical questions, tailored to specific needs of each patient. We hope it can be used as a GPS for patient care."

Verily is a subsidiary of California-based Alphabet that's focused on the life sciences and health care. Google, which in February announced plans to open its first Minnesota office near the clinic's headquarters in Rochester, is Alphabet's best-known division.

With the new partnership, Verily will work with Mayo to create a decision-support system that helps doctors with disease management, care guidelines and treatment options. They plan to first create tools for patients with cardiovascular and cardiometabolic conditions.

The system will be used at Mayo before being available to Verily's other health care partners.

"This initiative aims to provide the care team with the most validated care management plan for some of the most prevalent and costly chronic conditions," Dr. Vivian Lee, the president of Verily Health Platforms, said in a statement.

In 2019, Mayo Clinic and Google launched a partnership on cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence. The 10-year agreement called on Google to store the clinic's data and open the Rochester office.