Compliments of Post and Courier
Prisma Health is entering a 10-year partnership with German technology company Siemens to become more efficient and improve patient care, the companies announced June 22.
Prisma staff members will work with technology experts from the Siemens Healthineers division to evaluate how the company uses technology to treat patients, including the use of artificial intelligence.
Prisma Health, the state’s largest hospital system, needs to keep improving how it works as the challenges of health care, from rising costs to keeping a trained workforce, keep mounting, Prisma Health CEO Mark O’Halla said.
“We have to get better — better outcomes and cheaper,” O’Halla said.
One of the roles that technology can play is to make work more efficient for the staff, both through better systems and training, said Dave Pacitti, president for the Americas of Siemens Healthineers, the health care tech portion of the German engineering giant.
That should bring more time for clinical staff to treat patients, he said.
No financial terms of the 10-year partnership were disclosed, but Pacitti said it is his company’s largest partnership with a health care provider.
Artificial intelligence will be used to study how Prisma Health is treating patients by analyzing the collected data with no names of patients attached, O’Halla said.
AI also will be able to help care for individual patients, Pacitti said. One example: an AI system can work in the background as a doctor or other staff members examine computer images from a scan, looking to highlight areas on the image that that need more scrutiny.
The deal will include adding more modern diagnostic equipment from Siemens and making sure that the systems are deployed around the state in the most efficient way possible, O’Halla said.
For Siemens, the deal will provide direct clinical feedback on how its systems work in medical offices.
Prisma Health operates 18 hospitals, including the former Palmetto Health system in the Midlands. Headquartered in Greenville, it employs more than 30,000 staff members.