Google is looking to artificial intelligence to turn around its healthcare fortunes, according to Bloomberg.
Like its Big Tech competitors, Google parent Alphabet has for years been aiming for a foothold in the $4 trillion healthcare industry, with projects that have come and gone, including a personal health record platform with partners including Cleveland Clinic, Google Glass for surgeons, and contact lenses that sense glucose levels, according to the July 30 story. But the tech giant is staking its healthcare future on generative AI, like a partnership with Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare to automate drafts of emergency department visits and nurse handoffs.
But the AI work is still in its early stages and the company's overall healthcare strategy has been diffuse, ranging from wastewater surveillance of diseases to the 2021 acquisition of fitness tracker Fitbit for $2.1 billion to a ChatGPT-like large language model for physicians called MedLM.
"Our North Star is to help people everywhere live longer, healthier lives, to contribute meaningfully to scientific research and to improve healthcare delivery for all," a company spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Google pivoted its focus to partnering with hospitals and health systems directly, starting with the 2018 hiring of David Feinberg, MD, then-president and CEO of Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger (he later left Google for EHR vendor Cerner, now called Oracle Health). The collaboration with HCA, the nation's largest health system, could go a long way to determining whether that approach — and the company's healthcare AI efforts overall — will pan out.
"If Google's overall ambition is to completely disrupt the healthcare industry, well, nobody in the big tech world has succeeded," Emarketer senior digital health analyst Rajiv Leventhal told the news outlet. "Healthcare is a unique beast."