Google is advancing health projects across its enterprise — from simplifying EHR workflows, to increasing access to reliable health information, to developing new algorithms to detect diseases. Here are five projects the tech giant has in the works, according to a video the company posted April 1.
- Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group is developing a small computing module called Tag. Their goal is to create a wearable device that can recreate the same type of machine learning analysis that occurs within labs, according to Nicholas Gillian, machine learning lead at Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group.
- In March, Google Health integrated its EHR search tool Care Studio into Meditech's EHR platform. The partnership aims to give Meditech users access to Care Studio's data harmonization, search and summarization capabilities, Charles DeShazer, MD, Google's director of clinical products, said.
- Google unveiled its Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources software development kit to help healthcare providers run Android apps offline by storing and processing data locally without connectivity. The initiative is part of Google's mission to democratize access to high-quality care through mobile devices, according to Katherine Chou, Google's senior director for research and innovations.
- At the American Heart Association's annual meeting in November, Google unveiled results from its Fitbit heart study, which was led by Harvard physicians and involved nearly half a million Fitbit users, according to James Park, Fitbit's co-founder and vice president. The study found that Google's algorithm, which analyzes heart rate data passively, accurately identified undiagnosed atrial fibrillation 98 percent of the time.
- YouTube, which is owned by Google, launched an initiative in 2021 to combat health misinformation with four main focuses: removing misinformation, reducing its spread, promoting credible sources of health information and rewarding trustworthy content through monetization. The program is designed to break down barriers "between the ivory towers of academia and the everyday people who want to understand how to take better care of themselves and their families," Garth Graham, MD, the director and global head of healthcare and public health partnerships at Google and YouTube, said.