Normalized claim
Sidekick prompts: 6,000,000 prompts increase
Sidekick’s volume of interactions has surged from 1 million to more than 6 million prompts in just over a year.
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, scaled its Sidekick generative AI assistant from a secure employee “AI easy button” into an enterprise productivity and research workflow platform. The solution uses Gemini, Vertex AI, Vertex AI Search, Cloud Healthcare API, and Google Search grounding to support internal apps, research administration, and current-information retrieval while maintaining healthcare governance.
- Organization
- Highmark Health
- Industry
- Healthcare
- Location
- United States
- Published
- March 2026
Reported outcomes
27,900,000 USD
AI-enabled valueRevenue & growth
6,000,000 promptsSidekick prompts74 use casesActive use cases
Strategic outcomes
Other strategic outcomeReduced manual effort in research administrationRisk & complianceMaintained strict healthcare governance while scaling AI adoption
Why do we believe this?Outcome claims, sources, and evidence checks
Normalized claim
Active use cases: 74 use cases increase
This momentum is backed by 74 active use cases — an increase of 31 from the prior year.
Normalized claim
AI-enabled value: 27,900,000 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 3
- 1AI agents
- 2Workflow automation
- 3Semantic search
- Scale production use cases for employees and researchers while maintaining governance.
- Streamline access to current information.
- Automate drafts of complex research protocols.
- Built Sidekick as a secure generative AI assistant on Google Cloud.
- Used Vertex AI and Gemini for agent-driven capabilities.
- Created a lightweight service layer so internal apps can query Vertex AI Search through APIs and SDKs.
- Added guided workflows for AHN researchers to draft IRB protocols and consent materials.
- Integrated real-time Google Search for fact verification and grounding.
- Sidekick interactions grew from 1 million to more than 6 million prompts in just over a year.
- Highmark reported 74 active use cases, up 31 year over year.
- The company calculated $27.9 million in AI-enabled value in 2025.
- The workflow improved consistency and reduced manual effort in research administration.
Architecture
Sidekick evolved from a secure employee assistant into an enterprise platform for agentic workflows. Highmark built a lightweight service layer to let internal apps use Vertex AI Search via APIs and SDKs, and added guided research workflows for AHN protocol and consent drafting. The assistant also uses real-time Google Search for grounding and fact verification.
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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