Under the new relationship, Dignity Health will link to its digital and mobile healthcare program for use by both systems. In return, UCSF Health will work with Dignity Health to develop new digital patient programs and procedures in various advanced and specialty medical categories.

Details remain sketchy, but two prominent California health systems are merging resources and platforms to share one advanced digital healthcare network.

San Francisco-based Dignity Health, which operates 40 hospitals and 400 related facilities in Arizona, California and Nevada, will share its internally developed and cloud-based digital health platform with UCSF Health, another San Francisco health system. UCSF Health is a research and teaching hospital in San FranciscoCalifornia and is the medical center of the University of California, San Francisco.

We are incorporating innovative digital experiences that are simple and enable patients to make better informed decisions about their health.

Under the new relationship, Dignity Health will link to its digital and mobile healthcare program for use by both systems. In return, UCSF Health will work with Dignity Health to develop new digital patient programs and procedures in various advanced and specialty medical categories. “This collaboration between UCSF and Dignity Health will set a new national standard for how patients should be supported through their digital health care journeys with intensely positive and personal experiences,” says Dignity Health chief digital officer Shez Partovi.

The two health systems have yet to release key details of how the shared digital platform will work including the shared costs to develop and run the system, how the system will be organized and used, a development time table and what specific areas of medicine the system will cover.

In general, UCSF will begin redesigning its portal, website and mobile site to integrate with Dignity Health to “leverage Dignity Health’s technical expertise to re-envision how the medical center delivers information to patients,” says UCSF Health senior vice president and chief strategy officer Shelby Decosta.

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“Together, with Dignity Health, we are opening new pathways for health care organizations to create a superior experience for their own patients and ultimately, for patients nationwide,” Decosta says.

In later phases, UCSF’s Center for Digital Health Innovation and Dignity Health “will map out the multiple pathways that patients follow in moving from primary and secondary care to more acute care services, to create a robust digital system that connects patients and providers,” Partovi says.

Dignity Health, which operates a network of 10,000 physicians, is becoming better known throughout healthcare for its digital and mobile health programs. For example, Dignity has spent the past three years consolidating more than 150 disparate systems at various facilities onto one centralized electronic health records system from Cerner Corp.

Dignity Health also has developed nearly a dozen apps that create a highly personalized digital experience for patients across several care journeys, including maternal care, such as the “My Baby” pregnancy app, which provides end-to-end care for expecting mothers.

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“We are incorporating innovative digital experiences that are simple and enable patients to make better informed decisions about their health,” Decosta says.

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