Healthcare organizations have invested billions in electronic health records (EHRs), revenue cycle platforms, claims systems, patient engagement tools and data modernization initiatives. Yet administrative complexity continues to slow care delivery and increase costs for providers, payers, clinicians and patients. Prior authorizations delay treatment. Claim denials generate rework. Clinicians spend valuable time on documentation. And patients often struggle to navigate a fragmented experience.
Healthcare leaders are looking to AI to address this challenge. But the real opportunity is not simply adding more AI; it’s applying AI in ways that remove unnecessary work, accelerate access to care and improve outcomes and experiences for patients. It’s rethinking how work gets done and leveraging AI to eliminate friction before it occurs.
The collaboration between NTT DATA and Google Cloud is built to help healthcare organizations resolve this friction.
By combining Gemini for governed, enterprise-wide agents with our healthcare domain and operational expertise, we turn isolated agentic AI pilots focused on speeding up existing processes into orchestrated, production-grade workflows that prevent administrative friction before it starts.
The challenge: Automation without orchestration
Healthcare organizations are rapidly exploring AI across both clinical and operational functions. Yet adoption alone does not deliver transformation. Many AI initiatives focus on automating individual tasks, while the broader workflows that connect people, systems and decisions remain fragmented. As a result, organizations often see pockets of efficiency but continue to struggle with administrative complexity. Information must still move across multiple systems. Handoffs remain manual. And staff spend considerable time coordinating processes rather than advancing outcomes.
The technology exists to automate tasks. The greater challenge is connecting those capabilities into intelligent workflows that work together across the healthcare ecosystem.
The shift that matters
The next stage of AI is not simply automation. It is enabling intelligent workflows where AI supports routine activities. It’s agents executing coordinated actions across systems, with appropriate human oversight. It’s people focusing on exceptions, monitoring and making critical decisions. The goal is to move intelligence upstream, preventing friction rather than responding to it later.
So, how do healthcare organizations move from making tasks faster to eliminating avoidable work altogether?
The answer: Gemini with NTT DATA healthcare expertise
The platform and the practice
Healthcare doesn't need more isolated AI. It needs governed, multistep work across the systems it already has. As a Google Cloud Diamond partner and Gemini for healthcare launch partner, NTT DATA provides that blueprint. Gemini provides the platform; NTT DATA makes it work in healthcare.
A front door for every healthcare team
Gemini provides models, search capabilities across connected business systems, deep research and no-code tools for building agents. NTT DATA turns payer medical policies and authorization rules into curated, versioned knowledge sources that agents can rely on. We then redesign roles, so revenue cycle analysts, utilization management (UM) nurses and patient access teams change how they work.
A healthcare data backbone
Google Cloud’s Healthcare API and Healthcare Data Engine (HDE) using Gemini stores and standardizes clinical and imaging data in formats such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), Health Level Seven International Version 2 (HL7v2) and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM). NTT DATA builds the EHR, payer, clearinghouse and FHIR integrations that feed and hold up that data in production. In healthcare, that integration, rather than the model, is usually what stalls AI.
4 dimensions of expertise
NTT DATA brings four dimensions of expertise that enable healthcare organizations to move from insight to impact:
- Clinical: We understand clinical documentation, care coordination, decision support and new care models because we have worked inside them.
- Financial: We understand revenue cycle and administrative process transformation because we have run both at scale.
- Technical: We understand electronic health records as well as core modernization, cloud, APIs, interoperability and governed data platforms that bring EHR, claims, imaging, devices and operational data together through FHIR and semantic context.
- Governance: Healthcare organizations need AI that operates within clear guardrails. We help clients create rules that ensure agentic AI solutions align with regulatory requirements, organizational policies, security standards and clinical oversight.
Gemini provides the enterprise intelligence and agentic layer that connects people, knowledge and agents. NTT DATA provides the healthcare operating context. We redesign workflows to integrate with clinical and administrative platforms, govern decisions, define human-agent handoffs, drive adoption and operate at scale. The differentiation is not another AI implementation. It is a healthcare operating model built to move from isolated agents to coordinated execution.
Applying agentic AI to move beyond automation
By pairing Gemini with NTT DATA's healthcare expertise, we redesign three impact points in the revenue cycle where administrative friction is most visible:
Financial clearance Before care is scheduled, an agentic workflow verifies patient eligibility, checks active coverage, and calculates out-of-pocket estimates. By automating this upfront verification, the system clears administrative hurdles early, helping reduce scheduling delays and preventing surprise bills.
Prior authorization coordination. Once a specific treatment or procedure is ordered, the agentic workflow synthesizes clinical documentation against payer medical policies to prepare and submit authorization requests. It tracks response status and flags exceptions for review, ensuring a human-in-the-loop approach where licensed clinicians retain final decision-making authority to accelerate approvals.
Claim readiness and submission. Many claim denials stem from missing information, documentation gaps or coding inconsistencies. Agentic AI can help identify potential issues before claims are submitted by reviewing documentation, validating coding requirements and verifying payer-specific rules. The outcome is not simply faster claims processing. It is improved claim quality, cleaner submissions and fewer avoidable denials, reducing the costly rework that can pull clinicians and staff away from patient care.
Where this connects to care
Administrative friction is not separate from care delivery. When authorization, documentation or coverage decisions stall, care can stall with them. Removing that friction can improve timely access to care, return capacity to healthcare teams and reduce uncertainty for patients:
- A delayed prior authorization is a delayed procedure.
- A denied claim that triggers rework is time a clinician spends on paperwork instead of patients.
- A surprise bill is a patient who avoids follow-up care.
Doing so is both a financial and a healthcare intervention. When agentic AI moves intelligence upstream, it moves care upstream, too.
This is also where utilization management enters the picture. The same agentic capabilities that orchestrate prior authorization, clinical documentation and payer policy can extend into UM workflows. Coordinating utilization review, surfacing medical necessity evidence and routing complex cases to the right clinical expert are all points where administrative orchestration and clinical decision support meet.
Momentum for a new era of healthcare operations
AI used thoughtfully can help healthcare organizations reduce administrative burden, improve coordination across systems and allow people to focus on higher-value activities. Used poorly, it risks simply helping organizations perform inefficient processes faster. Providers and payers do not need to automate against each other faster. They need to learn to use agentic AI to eliminate administrative work that should not exist in the first place — while redirecting human expertise to work that requires judgment. The goal is to move intelligence upstream, not simply push automation downstream.
That is how healthcare will move beyond automation and cure administrative friction. And it’s where NTT DATA and Gemini can create a different model together.
What to do next
Ready to collaborate on the future of your AI strategy and transition to orchestrated, production-grade agentic workflows? Learn more about the Healthcare solutions we're building with our Gemini capabilities.
Authors
Sezin Palmer
North America AI Industry Solutions Leader, NTT DATA
Sanjay Saini
Managing Director - Healthcare AI solutions, NTT DATA
Gaurav Goel
Executive, Head of Gemini Enterprise, NTT DATA