Google’s generative AI technology is helping doctors at China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) in Taiwan diagnose diseases, plan treatment, educate patients and carry out medical research.

Using Google Cloud’s generative AI technology, including the MedLM large language model, CMUH has developed an AI-assisted physician to help healthcare professionals in disease diagnosis, treatment planning, patient education and medical research.

The goal is to introduce assistive tools designed to support medical professionals in precision cancer treatment. These tools aim to reduce the time spent searching for information and enable the quick capture of accurate data. This can aid professionals in developing cancer treatment plans, offering personalised treatment-related information to patients, and providing responses to patient health education inquiries.

CMUH is one of the first university hospitals in Asia to test MedLM. Through its collaboration with Google Cloud, CMUH wants to drive AI innovation in smart healthcare to shape the future of healthcare in Taiwan. MedLM will help facilitate CMUH in the timely access of accurate medical information to establish healthcare AI models for the Chinese-speaking market in Asia.

Der-Yang Cho, superintendent of CMUH, said MedLM could provide precise and rapid data analysis for drug guidelines, disease gene sequencing and medical records, among other areas. Such capabilities can accelerate the discovery of new treatments for difficult-to-treat diseases by medical teams and assist in the rapid development of treatment plans to help patients.

“We are excited about this collaboration, which positions smart hospitals in Taiwan at the forefront of providing more precision- and safety-oriented support to healthcare professionals and patients alike,” Der-Yang Cho said.

Kathy Lee, managing director of Google Cloud in north Asia, added: “Life sciences problems are fundamentally data problems, and this is where AI can fully unleash its potential. Generative AI from Google Cloud can help healthcare and life sciences organisations operate more efficiently and improve patient outcomes. In this remarkable era of gen AI, we are excited to collaborate with medical industry leaders that drive innovation through AI like CMUH, and partner with them to build the future of healthcare in Taiwan.”

Aashima Gupta, global director of healthcare strategy at Google Cloud, said that healthcare professionals were committed to delivering the best care for patients, and gen AI could be a crucial ally in reducing their workload. Gupta pointed out that this technology would ease the cognitive burden for staff and improve personal care for patients. Furthermore, it will allow healthcare professionals at CMUH to devote more time to tasks that require human judgment and expertise. She mentioned that ensuring the safety and effectiveness of gen AI was fundamental to these benefits.

The collaborative applications between CMUH and Google Cloud (cloud.google.com) include customised cancer treatment guidelines and cancer therapy Q&As. The guidelines were developed based on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines and were integrated with MedLM, enabling clinicians to capture accurate information based on the patient’s cancer staging, treatment methods and risk assessments. They can also generate cancer treatment plans and provide personalised treatment recommendations for clinicians to review, edit and use with patients.

Focusing on health education for cancer patients, the Q&As application incorporates the cancer care-related health educational content of CMUH into the MedLM model for training and optimisation, resulting in a system with extensive medical knowledge and Q&A capabilities. This not only diminishes the time healthcare professionals spend searching for information but also provides comprehensive treatment options. Furthermore, it contributes to enhancing overall clinical efficacy, improving patient understanding and engagement, and enhancing the quality of healthcare, thereby fostering warmer doctor-patient interactions.

In addition, in terms of new drug development, CMUH (www.cmuh.cmu.edu.tw) is leveraging Google’s AI accelerators and TPU (tensor processing unit) to assist in calculations related to protein folding and the development of new drugs. Preliminary tests at CMUH have shown that using these resources can reduce the computation time for related programmes by over tenfold.