Amazon Web Services this week announced a new artificial intelligence initiative designed to help customers across numerous industries make better use of advancements in machine learning and automation, and scope high-value use cases based on best practices and industry expertise. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The cloud giant says it will connect AI and ML experts in the AWS Partner Network – strategists, data scientists, engineers and solutions architects – to work "step-by-step" with customers around the globe to envision, design and launch new generative AI products, services and processes. 

Already engaging with the AWS generative AI program are Twilio and Highspot, among others.

"The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center is providing us with novel solutions and creative guidance for some of the most complex challenges and opportunities involved in bringing generative AI workloads to life at scale," Kurt Berglund, vice president of science at Highspot, said in Thursday's announcement 

Highspot is a platform that life sciences sales representatives use to provide data to potential healthcare customers. The company is working with the Innovation Center to select generative AI models, define paths to navigate technical or business challenges, develop proofs of concept and scale solutions at scale, according to AWS. 

Twilio is a customer engagement platform that some health systems and healthcare organizations use for patient engagement.

"Our goal with Twilio CustomerAI is to empower businesses to leverage both generative and predictive intelligence capabilities that help them better understand and provide deeper value to their customers," added Kathryn Murphy, senior vice president of product management at Twilio. 

"AWS and Twilio are longtime technology partners, and we’re proud to be jointly innovating on predictive AI, using Amazon SageMaker, and welcome future collaboration around generative AI," she said.

AWS says the program is focusing on providing guidance to apply generative AI "responsibly," and on optimizing ML to "reduce costs."

Customers in the new AWS program will leverage generative AI services like Amazon CodeWhisperer and Amazon Bedrock – a fully managed service that makes foundational models from multiple providers. 

THE LARGER TREND

Millions of customers from fast-growing startups, large enterprises and government agencies power their infrastructure on AWS, the company says. 

In healthcare, cloud computing can make personalized care, value-based care and genomic research possible. 

However, because clinical data comes in so many forms, formats and systems, cloud-based AI and ML tools are relied on to process incomplete and unstructured data and shepherd interoperability, according to Phoebe Yang, now board director at both GE Healthcare and Doximity. 

"Healthcare is more clinically effective and cost-effective when it prevents problems instead of reacting to them," she told Healthcare IT News previously in her role as the AWS general manager for nonprofit healthcare. 

While computing siloed data with AI and ML can better manage population health, and drive value and efficiency across the healthcare system, reconciling the value of large-scale centralized data lakes and the need to uphold privacy must also be addressed, she advised.

"This is a frontier of care that can’t work if the flow of data is interrupted or disjointed anywhere in the process."

Earlier this month, AWS rolled out new updates to support FHIR standards on Amazon HealthLake in order to comply with interoperability rules promulgated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT that enhance data sharing. 

ON THE RECORD

"Amazon has more than 25 years of AI experience, and more than 100,000 customers have used AWS AI and ML services to address some of their biggest opportunities and challenges," said Matt Garman, senior vice president of sales, marketing and global services at AWS, in the announcement. "Now, customers around the globe are hungry for guidance about how to get started quickly and securely with generative AI."

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.