Normalized claim
Prompt volume: 5,000,000 prompts increase
Sidekick’s volume of interactions has surged from 1 million to more than 6 million prompts.
GCPEvidence: Low35/100
Highmark Health Sidekick generative AI assistant scaling with Vertex AI Search and guided research workflows
Use case typeAI agentsUpdated Mar 5, 2026
Highmark Health (including Allegheny Health Network) uses its Sidekick generative AI assistant to support employees and researchers. Sidekick evolved from a secure "AI easy button" into an assistant with agent-driven capabilities. Highmark built a lightweight service layer so internal apps can use Vertex AI Search, and AHN researchers use Sidekick-based guided workflows to automate first drafts of IRB protocols and consent forms. Sidekick also integrates real-time Google Search for fact verification and grounding.
- Organization
- Highmark Health
- Industry
- Healthcare
- Location
- United States
- Published
- March 2026
Reported outcomes
5,000,000 prompts
prompt volumeOther quantified impact
74 use casesactive use cases27.9 million USDAI-enabled value
Strategic outcomes
Cost efficiencyReduced manual effort in research administrationOther strategic outcomeAutomated first drafts of research protocols and consent formsBetter decisions & insightEnabled rapid, data-driven strategic insights
Why do we believe this?Outcome claims, sources, and evidence checks
Normalized claim
Active use cases: 74 use cases increase
74 active use cases — an increase of 31 from the prior year
Normalized claim
AI-enabled value: 27.9 million USD increase
delivering a calculated $27.9 million in AI-enabled value for Highmark in 2025 alone.
Why do we believe this deployment?Customer identity, provider attribution, maturity, and source checks
- Customer
- Highmark Health, Allegheny Health Network
- Provider
- GCP
- Maturity
- Unknown
- Linked source
- Google Cloud Blog
No explicit deployment-stage evidence found.
Customer identity supportedSource describes one deploymentMaturity evidence evaluated
Primary read
Use case focus
Showing 3 of 4
- 1AI agents
- 2Workflow automation
- 3Semantic search
- Scale production use cases for employees and researchers while maintaining governance.
- Streamline access to current information and automate drafts of complex research protocols.
- Highmark built Sidekick on Google Cloud using Gemini and Vertex AI.
- The team created a lightweight service layer so internal applications can use Vertex AI Search through APIs or SDKs.
- For AHN researchers, Sidekick provides a guided workflow that automates the first draft of IRB protocols and consent builder documents.
- Sidekick integrates real-time Google Search to support fact verification and grounding.
Technologies
- Sidekick interactions grew from 1 million to more than 6 million prompts in just over a year.
- There are 74 active use cases, an increase of 31 from the prior year.
- Highmark calculated $27.9 million in AI-enabled value in 2025.
- The research workflow improved consistency and reduced manual effort, allowing researchers to focus on scientific discovery.
Architecture
Highmark built a secure, enterprise assistant layer around Gemini and Vertex AI, including a lightweight service layer for internal app access to Vertex AI Search, guided workflow automation for research protocol drafting, and real-time grounding via Google Search.
Sources & evidence1
Evidence: Low35/100Evidence strength
- Customer explicitly identified
- Quantified outcome available
- Technical implementation details available
Type: Blog PostPublished: Mar 5, 2026Publisher: Google CloudEvidence: VendorConfidence: Medium
AI-generated summary. Verify important details with the linked sources before relying on this case.
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