Google is pushing for improved healthcare with the use of AI models and code standards. According to Karen DeSalvo, Google’s chief health officer, people are looking for a mobile healthcare experience with personalized insights, services, and care. Germany is also introducing a seal of quality that guarantees information from trustworthy sources, however, there has been criticism over less trustworthy sources receiving a seal regardless.
Google aims to obtain reliable answers to medical questions with Med-PaLM, and is collaborating with Bayer to accelerate and scale quantum chemical calculations with Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) in the cloud. With health data, Google and Bayer are looking into reducing timely diagnosis errors, for instance, in cancer patients.
To make digital health applications more accessible in resource-poor areas, Google has developed the Open Health Stack. Using the open format Fast Healthcare Interoperability (FHIR), the apps should be interoperable. Google’s Open Health Stack is currently being used in several African countries, and it is also working with the World Health Organization and various partners to provide standards-based tools.
Google is designing its products with equality, ethics, security, and privacy in mind. It is also working with Kenyan nonprofit Jacaranda Health to improve maternal and infant health care in government hospitals. The company aims to support expectant mothers with the further development of AI programs for “point-of-care ultrasound systems.”
Google recently announced that it is working with medical technology companies on AI-based breast cancer screening to help doctors diagnose patients. However, it acknowledges that AI alone cannot solve all healthcare problems as medicine entails more than just algorithms and data.
