Google Cloud previews Gemini for healthcare, with read-only Epic and Oracle Health connectors

Google Cloud has launched Gemini for healthcare in preview. It is an industry package on top of the Gemini agent that Google introduced at Gemini at Work last month, aimed at hospitals, clinics and health plans. Launch partners include HCA Healthcare, Highmark Health and Northwell Health.

What is in the package

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian lists four parts:

• Skills. Reusable, expert-written instructions for tasks such as medical records synthesis, pre-visit chart preparation, prior authorization packets, coverage review and benefit determination. Organisations can write their own.
• Connectors. Links to EHR, claims, care management and admin systems that inherit each system’s existing role-based access.
• Partners. Systems integrators and digital health vendors who extend and connect it.
• Governance. One place to set policy for every agent interaction, with audit logging, citations back to sources and model choice, including partner models. Google says it is “built to support HIPAA compliance”.

The connectors are the detail to read

The named connectors show where Google drew the lines:

• Epic and Oracle Health give authorised users read-only access to conditions, medications, labs and notes, with no write-back to the chart.
• InterSystems offers a FHIR MCP server; Keragon connects to 400+ healthcare apps through a single MCP integration; Verato handles patient identity matching.
• Optum coordination-of-benefits and network eligibility connectors are in limited release. TriZetto checks eligibility and co-pays, GoodRx surfaces drug prices, and Infinitus Relay automates payer phone calls.
• IMO Health and an ICD-10 tool cover terminology and coding.

Google cites a figure that clinicians lose nearly 28 hours a week to paperwork. It has published no price, and no partner results yet.

Why this matters

For anyone building agents in regulated settings, the design choices are the template: read-only clinical connectors, per-agent identity that inherits user permissions, and citations a reviewer can check. Several connectors arrive as MCP servers, so the MCP integration pattern from general-purpose agents is now one way EHR data gets in. Before trusting outputs such as out-of-pocket estimates, ask for the audit logs and test them against your own plan documents.