Telstra Ventures lists a broad range of focus, in cloud, security, network, consumer, and media. Managing director Mark Sherman told Crunchbase in February 2021 that building the ecosystem for cloud infrastructure investments is key to the 5G adoption strategy. These investments reflect a global pattern.

This move arrives as large health systems are tying up with cloud giants to improve data sharing beyond hospital walls: Large health system Providence uses Microsoft Cloud to boost easier access and exchange of electronic health record data between healthcare providers and health plans, for instance.

Cloud and edge computing: The low latency can shift most heavy computing to the cloud, creating new opportunities for analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, encryption, etc.

The news: Adobe is offering its Adobe Experience Cloud to a variety of healthcare players—including Walgreens, Pfizer, Mercy Health, and Change Healthcare—to boost customer experience.

Health tech giant Philips is collaborating with the research-driven health system of University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to streamline the digital patient experience and improve healthcare delivery using Philips HealthSuite—a cloud-based care platform that enables virtual care, simplifies patient navigation, and uses AI to personalize care, all while bolstering interoperability.

Earlier this month, R1 RCM announced it’s acquiring cloud-based financial engagement platform VisitPay for $300 million in cash to consolidate patients’ billing statements across different visits and locations.

For example, its Cloud for Healthcare solution and top-rated healthcare AI offerings could enhance and complement Nuance’s voice assistant products. As Microsoft races to tighten its grip in the healthcare industry, it will likely use Nuance to boost its products’ appeal in the eyes of hospitals and health systems.

About two-thirds of payer execs say a lack of requisite expertise (like cloud engineering and software architecture) is a challenge to their digital transformation strategies, according to a May Deloitte survey of 35 tech leaders at US health plans.

Earlier this month, Amazon’s Halo wearable unveiled functionality that measures movement using a smartphone camera and cloud-based AI, adding onto its unique health tracking features that measure body fat percentage and tone of voice.

In the past year alone, Humana partnered with Salesforce to launch a cloud-based care coordination platform, tapped Dispatch Health to provide hospital-level care at home for its MA members, piloted its own digital chronic care management platform, and teamed up with at-home primary care startup Heal. Humana could create a connected ecosystem of its horizontally integrated home healthcare services.

Amazon’s wearable, Halo, launched a new functionality that measures movement and flexibility using a smartphone camera and cloud-based AI. This adds to Halo’s existing suite of health tracking measures, which includes body fat, sleep activity, and tone of voice. Users take pictures of themselves in different poses for 5–10 minutes so the Movement Health algorithm can analyze their postures.

After all, that’s what Amazon did with its cloud tech arm, Amazon Web Services—which started out as an internal infrastructure solution to handle Amazon’s rapid growth and quickly turned into one of the biggest cloud vendors in the world. Amazon represents just one instance of the massive amount of consolidation happening among healthcare incumbents and entrants alike:.

And earlier this year, Komodo made its first ever acquisition: It scooped up Mavens, a cloud-based solutions vendor. This move melds organically with one of Komodo's goals of lifting disease burden since Komodo and Mavens' combined solution works to efficiently connect patients with life-saving therapies.

And tech giants have been rolling out cloud-based solutions that can improve telehealth interoperability: Google Cloud announced a strategic partnership with Amwell, in which the tech giant poured $100 million into Amwell firm to become its preferred global cloud partner.

But the painstaking process of bringing a drug to market isn't only creating opportunities for AI-focused startups—tech giants are also lending their AI, cloud, and data prowess to land pharma deals.

Multiaccess edge computing (MEC, formerly “mobile edge computing”): This shifts some data processing away from the centralized cloud and to local computing situated as close as possible to an end user, for example at a base station or other local node.

Google is flexing its cloud analytics brawn to help health systems turn SDOH data into actionable health insights. Google released its machine learning-enabled Healthcare Natural Language API in November 2019 to help healthcare providers make clinical use of unstructured text in health records.

For example, developing for 5G will enable more cloud-based untethered AR and VR experiences and multi-angle and 360-degree video for games and sporting events. No. 3: Big Tech Confronts Data Privacy. Privacy and security have become lightning-rod issues for the tech industry.

Cloud developers have a chance to tie up with researchers and drugmakers scrambling to develop a coronavirus vaccine. The computing capabilities of cloud developers can be utilized to speed up drug development, and we've seen innovative digital health firms leverage the tech in their efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

For example, Nissan introduced the futuristic concept of “Invisible-to-Visible” (I2V) technology that overlays information from both a vehicle’s onboard sensors and the cloud onto the windshield.