Snowflake unveils data cloud service for the healthcare and life science sectors
Snowflake is launching a new data cloud service targeting the healthcare and life sciences space, following through on the company’s stated strategy to increase its focus on specific vertical industries to maintain its rapid growth.
The new Healthcare & Life Sciences Data Cloud will provide healthcare and life sciences solutions for partners and enable them to develop their own solutions—both leveraging the interoperability and data sharing capabilities of the Snowflake platform.
The Snowflake announcement is indicative of efforts by IT vendors, including Databricks and ServiceNow, to build on their core systems with applications and services for vertical markets—creating opportunities for channel partners along the way, according to the company.
The new service is expected to attract healthcare providers seeking ways to leverage healthcare data, including unstructured data such as clinical documents, DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) files and radiology images, to improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes and enhance clinical and operational decision making.
Life sciences companies, including pharmaceutical companies, can use the service to integrate and analyze healthcare and clinical trial data for drug development purposes.
Snowflake sees vertical industries, including healthcare and life sciences, as key to helping the data cloud company maintain its rapid rate of growth.
In addition to tapping into the data sharing and collaboration capabilities of the Snowflake platform, the Healthcare & Life Science Data Cloud leverages the Snowpark developer framework that developers, data engineers and data scientists use to create data applications and manage pipeline and machine learning workflows.
The new service supports industry data governance and security requirements and standards, including HIPAA and HITRUST and GxP compatibility audits. It supports the OHDSI OMOP data model and ecosystem, according to Snowflake, and can process and run HL7/FHIR messages.
Solutions and services developed and delivered by partners are a critical element of the Healthcare & Life Science Data Cloud, according to the company. That includes systems integrators and consulting service partners such as Cognizant, Deloitte, Infosys and NTT Data who are already building solutions for their clients on the new platform.
Also benefiting from the new offering are ISVs and application developers in the vendor’s Powered by Snowflake program including Health Catalyst, Strata and IQVIA who are building software—including analytics-as-a-service applications—that run on the Healthcare & Life Science Data Cloud.
The Healthcare & Life Science Data Cloud also enables third-party healthcare and life sciences data providers in the Snowflake Data Marketplace, including Compile, Equifax, Invitae and SameSky Health, who can market data without the need for data copying and data movement.
And Snowflake’s technology partners, including machine learning technology providers Dataiku and H2o.ai and data analytics tool supplier ThoughtSpot, also work with data provided through the new cloud service.
For more information about this release, visit www.snowflake.com.