University of California Davis, Amazon’s Digital Health Equity Innovation Partner

UC Davis Health has opened a cloud innovation hub in partnership with Amazon Web Services, the non-profit academic health system announced Monday.

UC Davis Health, a Sacramento-based healthcare system that is part of the University of California Davis, is the latest to join Amazon’s cloud innovation program, open to nonprofits, educational institutions, and government agencies.

The UC Davis Health Center will solicit clinical, patient and community project ideas for digital health equity and accessibility. The health system will make the results of the project available to the public so that others can use its work.

“Equity in digital health has become a central concern, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said UC Davis Health CEO David Lubarski. news release… “Many of our underserved communities have struggled to get the help they need, and the digital divide has only widened.”

UC Davis Health and Amazon Web Services staff will work with the center and identify issues that can be resolved using the cloud. The partners did not disclose financial details of the deal in a press release. Amazon will provide resources for this venture.

The Cloud Innovation Center is part of UC Davis Health’s Digital Collaborative for Innovation and Validation, an innovation hub that aims to empower clinicians, researchers, students and community members to collaborate on digital health solutions. The collaboration is also testing and testing new tools.

Amazon Web Services has been the focus of its healthcare parent company. The cloud computing subsidiary has released cloud-based communications and documentation for healthcare organizations and has forged partnerships with healthcare systems such as UPMC and healthcare information technology providers such as Cerner. Other Amazon healthcare initiatives include Amazon Care and Amazon Pharmacy.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft are forging cloud agreements with healthcare organizations as vendors move applications and data to the cloud to cut costs and develop new technologies. HCA Healthcare recently partnered with Google Cloud and hospitals company Truveta closed a deal with Microsoft Azure.

Most healthcare organizations are not migrating all of their applications and data to the cloud, even as interest in remote capabilities is growing. More than 60% use a hybrid approach, moving some workloads to the cloud and leaving others in on-premises datacenters. survey from the College of Health Information Management Executives and the Healthcare Triangle Company.