Quest Launches AI to Explain Lab Results
Quest Diagnostics has launched an AI companion to help patients understand their lab results. The new feature, based on Google's Gemini, analyzes up to five years of an individual's lab data to explain results and identify potential health risks.
The Quest AI Companion is integrated directly into the MyQuest patient portal, a HIPAA-compliant environment, ensuring users don't have to input their health data into public AI tools. This strategic choice addresses significant patient concerns about data privacy when using AI for health information. The feature is designed to bridge the gap between receiving complex medical data and discussing it with a healthcare provider. This initiative is the result of a collaboration with Google Cloud that began in March 2025. Quest is leveraging Google's Gemini models to power the AI Companion, aiming to improve customer experiences and streamline data management. In 2024 alone, Quest handled over 200 million test requisitions and managed more than 80 billion data points, highlighting the scale of data the company is working to make more accessible to patients. The move to empower patients with AI-driven insights into their own lab results is part of a broader trend of increasing patient engagement through technology. The goal is to shift from a reactive healthcare model to a more proactive one, where patients are active participants in their health journey. Over 40 million people worldwide are already using AI tools for health information, indicating a significant demand for such services. Interestingly, Quest's primary competitor, Labcorp, has also entered the AI space but with a different strategic focus. In July 2025, Labcorp launched "Test Finder," a generative AI tool developed with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This tool is aimed at clinicians, not patients, and is designed to help healthcare providers select the appropriate lab tests from a complex menu. Labcorp's AI tool is being integrated into electronic health record (EHR) systems and the company's "Labcorp Link" platform, which is used for ordering nearly half a million lab tests monthly. This highlights a different approach to AI adoption in the diagnostics industry: Quest is focusing on the patient experience post-testing, while Labcorp is concentrating on the clinician's workflow at the point of ordering. The successful integration of AI into enterprise healthcare settings faces several hurdles, including ensuring data privacy and security, overcoming interoperability challenges between different systems, and managing the high costs of implementation. For product leaders, the key challenge is not just deploying AI but integrating it seamlessly into existing workflows to enhance efficiency and user experience without compromising on safety and privacy.
