Google Is Rapidly Becoming A Healthcare Powerhouse

Healthcare is a complicated industry, muddled by a variety of intricately woven challenges, delicacies, and nuances that are unique to the sector. Tackling these challenges is certainly not for the faint-hearted, especially in the modern era of continuously changing regulatory demands, technological developments, and evolving patient and public health needs.

Google is one such industry titan that was not founded as a healthcare company, but has since invested billions of dollars and significant resources in trying to Boost the state of healthcare. Over the years, this ambition has manifested through many different initiatives, especially as the company’s leadership has boldly empowered multiple teams and divisions across the organization to support healthcare ventures.

This has made way for an enriched and disruptive approach to tackling some of healthcare’s most onerous issues across multiple siloes.

For example, Google’s Care Studio, which provides clinicians the ability to search and collate pertinent patient information through a centralized platform, has been celebrated as one of the most disruptive innovations for optimizing healthcare data. Congruently, Google Cloud has made its own strides with regards to data management. Its Healthcare Data Engine empowers unification of data sets to enable interoperability and accessibility, meaning that organizations can do more with their data now than ever before. The technology also enables novel capabilities such as insights into social determinants of health and patient throughput analytics.

These represent just a few examples of the many different products that Google is actively innovating in its journey to becoming a powerhouse and impactful force in healthcare.

The Care Studio dashboard collates a patient's pertinent information and provides an integrated view ... [+] for clinicians.

I had an enlightening conversation with Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Google’s Chief Health Officer. Dr. DeSalvo is an experienced physician and was previously Assistant Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She carries an astute and deep perspective of how healthcare has evolved and what is required to create lasting impact for patients and communities. She explains: “Google is a life company…not a health company. To have a high quality of life, health is very important. They want to help people, and they want to help enterprises meet consumers where they are and provide them what they need. One of the primary goals of the company is to help billions of people around the world become healthier in an equitable manner… giving every single person an opportunity to have the highest quality of health.”

She discussed a three pronged approach to how technology and Google’s work can Boost healthcare, which really focuses on addressing the needs of the patients, the providers, and enterprises as a whole. To truly create meaningful change in healthcare, resources and attention must be focused on all three of these siloes, as they are intricately interconnected.

Some examples of this approach include:

Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Google's Chief Health Officer.

While generative AI is of course the latest development which has taken the world by storm and has significant potential in healthcare, Dr. DeSalvo thoughtfully explains that the company’s goal is to “expand multiple lanes at once—continue to refine and Boost core tools such as traditional search, while also investing in improving and embracing newer technologies such as generative AI.” She also cautiously warns against haste with this new technology— “just as with any technology, there are quite a few open questions— it doesn’t mean they should not do the work or push forward; it just means that they should do it while keeping in mind privacy, ethics, equity, and security at the forefront of the design.”

This deep rooted allegiance to maintaining the highest standards of privacy and patient security is definitely a key priority for Google, as it continues to meaningfully emphasize its commitment to responsible AI practices.

The delicate nature of pushing forward innovation while carefully balancing security and privacy concerns is a growing phenomenon, especially as technology giants are increasingly entering the healthcare space. For example, both Amazon and Microsoft have notably ramped up their healthcare offerings in the last decade. Earlier this year, Amazon made a very bold entry into care delivery with its acquisition of primary care service provider One Medical. Microsoft’s commitment to healthcare has also increased, spanning from offerings in cloud technology to hardware services. Indeed, technology and healthcare have never been closer. But this close marriage requires thoughtful execution and continuous revision to ensure development is occurring not only quickly, but is also done so in an ethical manner.

Regardless of the immense amount of work ahead, one thing is certain: companies like Google are innovation machines, relentlessly committed to improving customer experiences and creating lasting impact. Indeed, this commitment provides a promising future for the generation ahead.

When it comes to health questions, be careful if using ChatGPT

Researchers at Montreal’s Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine (CHU Sainte-Justine) and the Montreal Children’s Hospital recently asked ChatGPT 20 medical questions. The artificial intelligence engine provided them with answers of … doubtful quality, including factual errors and made-up references. They recently published the results of their research in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health.

“These results are alarming, given that trust is a pillar of scientific communication,” said Dr. Jocelyn Gravel, lead author of the study and emergency physician at CHU Sainte-Justine. “ChatGPT users should pay close attention to the references provided before incorporating them into medical manuscripts.”

Aimed at scientists who might be tempted to use the ChatGPT artificial intelligence model for writing medical texts, the researchers recommended that they instead direct their questions to a professional.

For this study, the first to assess the quality and accuracy of the references provided by ChatGPT, the group claims, they drew their questions from existing studies and asked ChatGPT to back up its answers with references. Subsequently, the researchers had the software’s responses rated on a scale of 0 to 100 per cent by the authors of the articles from which the questions originated.

Seventeen authors agreed to review the responses. They rated them as of questionable quality (with a median score of 60 per cent). They also found five major and seven minor factual errors. For example, ChatGPT suggested administering an anti-inflammatory drug by injection when it should instead be ingested. Another example: it had increased the global mortality rate associated with Shigella infections tenfold.

Of the references provided, 69 per cent were invented, yet looked true. Ninety-five per cent of these used the names of authors who had previously published articles on a related topic, or from recognized organizations such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. They all had titles related to the subject, and used the names of well-known newspapers or websites. Furthermore, even the real references were problematic, with almost half of them containing errors.

The researchers then questioned ChatGPT about the accuracy of the references provided. In one case, the AI argued that “the references are available on PubMed” and provided a web link to other publications unrelated to the issue. In another case, the software replied, “I strive to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information I have, but errors or inaccuracies may occur.”

According to Dr. Esli Osmanlliu, emergency physician at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and scientist from the Child Health and Human Development Program at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, “The importance of correct references in science is undeniable. The quality and breadth of references provided in authentic studies demonstrate that researchers have conducted a comprehensive literature review and are familiar with the topic. This process allows results to be integrated into the context of previous work, a fundamental aspect of the advancement of medical research. Not providing references is one thing, but creating fake references would be considered fraudulent for researchers.”

“Researchers using ChatGPT could be misled by false information, as clear, seemingly consistent, and stylistically appealing references can hide low-quality content,” the researcher continued.

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