The large data computers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google generate billions of dollars in cloud computing and Google signed a large deal with ramifications beyond storing the data. Google is involved in health care and its biggest customer is Ascension – one of the US leading non-profit health systems. Ascension is headquartered in St. Louis and operates 150 hospitals and 50 senior living facilities in 21 states.

In an article from Reuters, the partnership between Google and Ascension will explore artificial intelligence and machine-learning applications to help improve clinical effectiveness as well as patient safety.

From Google’s perspective, Google Cloud chief executive Thomas Kurian has made it a priority to aggressively target 6 businesses for Google’s services including health care, financial services, insurance, retail, media, government services.

Google brings the ability to analyze data to identify diseases and make predictions aimed at improving outcomes and reducing costs.

In the future, patients will be given tests such as they are now, but AI will do the predictive analysis first, then the doctors will determine if the AI is the course to follow. It is possible Big Pharma will have to change its normal patterns.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many stocks in the health care field, because we all will be medical patients at one time or another. For the administrators cutting costs is a good thing, because medicine in general is expensive. There is a fine balance between keeping costs down and patients being advocates for themselves. From an investor point of view, keeping costs down makes the industry more attractive as an investment.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.