I don’t know about you, but I’ve always assumed that Google tools like Sheets and Docs were very handy but far from ready for the big time.
Of late, I’ve been using these tools to develop and share ideas and documents online with outside partners – certainly an important activity – but I’ve always sort of assumed that they were still rather limited under the hood.
However, a new deal integrating these consumer tools has convinced me that I’m far behind the times. CommonSpirit Health, which operates 140 hospitals, has rolled out Google Workspace at 1,000 care sites across its network. The deal brings Workspace to about 140,000 health system staffers. By the way, I should note that Workspace is a Google Cloud project.
Having assumed for so long that these tools were far too lightweight for enterprise use, I was intrigued to see that Google Workplace includes several Google apps, including Drive, Meet. Doc, Chat and Gmail. Admittedly, Gmail already offers business-class services, so its inclusion wasn’t much of a surprise, but the integration of these other apps caught me off guard.
Having casually used the apps appearing on Drive for so long, I suppose my impression of them froze in place. It seems I missed how powerful they had become. I think what threw me off somewhat was that I seldom see consumer tools transform into an enterprise standard, but there you have it.
In any event, the installation apparently went smoothly. The Google statement didn’t specify how long the process lasted but reported that this was one of the fastest Workspace deployments to date.
Of course, it’s hard to tell whether the speedy rollout could be attributed to the majority of Workspace, the help of Google Cloud implementation partner Maven Wave or the alacrity and preparedness of the CommonSpirit team. (I would be quite interested to learn what and who drove this rapid rollout.)
According to Google, the deal was spurred in part by demands imposed by the pandemic, which has made collaboration with patients and colleagues more urgent than ever. I’m sure there’s some truth in that. But just as importantly, CommonSpirit had an urgent need to integrate more effectively with Dignity Health Health and Catholic Health Initiatives, which he has been aligned with since 2019.
I’ll be interested to see whether Workspace can really do what it promises to do.
To be sure, a product offered by Google Cloud, Workspace will offer reliability, speed and all of the capacity for storing and manipulating data that any hospital could want.
On the other hand, I’m always skeptical about workspace collaboration tools generally. Speaking as someone who has used a wide variety of such tools in workplace settings, I have never found one that really satisfied the needs of my teams. (To give credit where credit is due, Slack came pretty close but didn’t quite get there.)
Given these experiences, I question whether Google Workspace can support the complex interactions between providers and patients effectively. From what I’ve seen, even some high-profile, purpose-built platforms don’t seem to satisfy the end-users, so I question whether a more generic tool will do the trick.
As always, it comes down to a game of wait and see. I truly hope that CommonSpirit achieves its goals. With any luck, the health system will be able to triumphantly report success with Workspace in the next year or two.
