Google Unveils AI-Powered Search for Medical Professionals

Digital Disrupting Healthcare With Patient-Provider Interfaces

Google has debuted artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search capabilities designed for health care workers.

Google Cloud customers can sign up to get early access to Vertex AI Search features for health and life science firms, the tech giant announced in a Monday (Oct. 9) company blog post.

“With these new features, healthcare organizations will now have Google-quality gen AI search that is medically tuned, allowing users to find accurate clinical information much more efficiently, and to search a broad spectrum of data from clinical sources,” the company said in the post.

AI-powered search will help people in the healthcare space discover the right information and glean insights from it, helping organizations to run more effectively and improve patient care, according to the post.

For life sciences, generative AI is “driving operational efficiencies in the near term, enhancing the development of products and ultimately supporting precision medicine,” per the post.

Lisa O’Malley, senior director for product management for Cloud AI at Google, told CNBC the technology can help doctors learn a patient’s history without reviewing their own notes or other health records separately.

Rather, they can ask questions like “What medications have this patient taken in the last 12 months?” and find the pertinent information in one place, the report said.

The launch of the function is happening as generative AI faces some roadblocks to adoption in the healthcare space.

A survey by management consulting firm Bain & Company showed that the main barriers to generative AI in healthcare are a lack of resources, expertise and regulation, with data access and quality and organizational resistance close behind.

The recurring theme found in industry studies is that generative AI is still in the early stages, with time needed to earn public trust.

So far, Americans remain cautious, even if they can see AI’s benefits, according to the “Generative AI Tracker®” by PYMNTS Intelligence.

“In fact, 60% of Americans surveyed for the report say they are uncomfortable with a provider relying on AI in their healthcare while 57% believe using AI to diagnose diseases and suggest treatments would harm the patient-provider relationship,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

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Corporate Delinquencies Reach Highest Rate Since 2017

business loans, delinquencies, banking

Corporate delinquencies are reportedly at the highest rate they’ve reached in eight years.

The delinquency rate for loans from U.S. banks to both U.S. and foreign companies rose to 1.3% at the end of 2024, a figure that was the highest since the first quarter of 2017 but well below the 5% seen during the 2008 financial crisis, the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday (Feb. 17), citing data from BankRegData.

The total amount of bank debt on which U.S. business borrowers were at least one month late reached $28 billion, up $2.2 billion from three months earlier and up $5.4 billion from a year earlier, according to the report.

The report attributed the rise to interest rates that remain high, surprising some observers who expected them to fall this year. A pickup in inflation in January and concerns about the impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs have delayed further interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, the report said.

Corporate bank loans tend to be variable rate, so the expected decline in interest rates would have given some relief to borrowers, the report said.

The data from BankRegData does not include loans from direct lenders and private credit funds, per the report.

It was reported in January that the growth in commercial bank loans was at the slowest it’s been since the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Commercial bank loans grew by around 2.7% in 2024, which was only somewhat faster than the 2.3% rise seen in 2023.

A number of bankers said they hoped to see loan growth later this year, citing optimism among clients and other indicators.

Bank of America said during a January earnings call that commercial loans were up 5% year over year in the fourth quarter and that loan and deposit growth in the current year should outpace last year’s.

J.P. Morgan Chase said during a January earnings call that there has been improvement in business sentiment and that balance sheets at small businesses are healthy.

Citi CEO Jane Fraser said during a January earnings call that in the United States, “growth is not only being driven by the higher-end consumer but also by a strong and innovative corporate sector.”