Want to know how Google is thinking about their role in healthcare? The following statement by their Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo, MD at their annual “The Check Up” event sums it up nicely:
“The future of health is consumer driven. People will expect a mobile-first experience with more personalized insights, services and care. That means enterprises including Google will need to evolve to meet consumers where they are…”
How this may or may not interact with Verily efforts is unknown, but there is no indication they are especially coordinated.
Several themes are made clear in Dr. DeSalvo’s statement:
– Google believes that consumerization in healthcare will continue
– Fitbit, and presumably other devices over time, is core to their consumer strategy.
– AI is underlying all of this.
Ok, so what? How does this influence entrepreneurial opportunities? How might this influence clinicians? Investors? As large tech and retail companies build more footprint with wearables, and even health clinics, we can assume that diagnostic efforts, targeted search and more will continue to get smarter. The role of Primary Care will certainly be squeezed as initial triage moves away from being physician-driven and more to AI. The impact to Primary Care is pretty evident, but how about the referral pathways to specialists? Additionally, how does search change when Google knows so much about your health? Do they become the quarterback for referrals? Do they directly influence the sale of everything from food to nutraceuticals to fitness equipment? When we say “influence”, we mean influence MORE…because they are already deeply embedded into these buying decisions visa vie their dominance in targeted search.
See related story in FierceHealthcare
“The future of health is consumer driven. People will expect a mobile-first experience with more personalized insights, services and care. That means enterprises including Google will need to evolve to meet consumers where they are…”
How this may or may not interact with Verily efforts is unknown, but there is no indication they are especially coordinated.
Several themes are made clear in Dr. DeSalvo’s statement:
– Google believes that consumerization in healthcare will continue
– Fitbit, and presumably other devices over time, is core to their consumer strategy.
– AI is underlying all of this.
Ok, so what? How does this influence entrepreneurial opportunities? How might this influence clinicians? Investors? As large tech and retail companies build more footprint with wearables, and even health clinics, we can assume that diagnostic efforts, targeted search and more will continue to get smarter. The role of Primary Care will certainly be squeezed as initial triage moves away from being physician-driven and more to AI. The impact to Primary Care is pretty evident, but how about the referral pathways to specialists? Additionally, how does search change when Google knows so much about your health? Do they become the quarterback for referrals? Do they directly influence the sale of everything from food to nutraceuticals to fitness equipment? When we say “influence”, we mean influence MORE…because they are already deeply embedded into these buying decisions visa vie their dominance in targeted search.
See related story in FierceHealthcare
