Google To Introduce Web-Like Searches For Doctors To Find Medical Records

In 2018, Google recruited David Feinberg, the former head of Geisinger Health, a Pennsylvania-based hospital system. He is now head of Google Health, a newly set up division of Google. However, the search giant used to keep the operation and goals of this division secret.

That is not the case anymore, as recently, Feinberg started to share more about Google Health’s plans at HLTH, a conference on healthcare in Las Vegas.

Feinberg described himself as a “no tech guy,” and what he is doing is to expand Google’s most well-known expertise in search to help doctors find medical records as well as improve the results of searches relating to the health sector on YouTube and Google.

Attracted by the potential of the sector, Google has been working for years to establish a solid standing in this $3.5 trillion market. The company is highly relevant to this sector as most of the tasks in this massive market are still done manually. However, its initial efforts were not fruitful. The company has difficulty with its contact lens that can measure the level of blood glucose by analyzing users’ tears, and its service in medical records. This explains why the company decided to hire David Feinberg, a man with experience and expertise in this field.

Feinberg is in charge of the health strategy, and he reports directly to Sundar Pichai, the company’s CEO. However, his work calls for collaboration with other divisions like the cloud team, YouTube, and search. How successful he is in Google will largely depend on how well he is in convincing other teams to follow his plans.

On HLTH’s stage, Feinberg said that some of his ideas had been executed to apply the technology of Google to the healthcare sector. He took an example of a search bar at the top of the electronic health record that did not require any training.

He said that lots of his fellow doctors are becoming more like data clerks with all the time they have to spend filling medical records, charting, and assigning bills. He said that Google did not try to compete with the existing companies in the field like Cerner and Epic; all it wanted to do is to offer help with the grunt work.

Here is how Google’s system will work. Doctors can type in keywords relevant to what they are looking for in a search bar, as with what they do when they use Google. The system will then display possible responses and information. For example, when the doctors type 87, the Google system will then complete the information automatically and then offer information of a patient with stomach cancer who is 87 years old.

Some people who have insight into the plans of the Google Health division said that the team was also working on the quality of searches on health for consumers, the ultimate goal is to reduce the number of bad advice, such as videos that try to convince people not to vaccinate their children.

In a private conversation, Feinberg expressed concerns over a phenomenon called “Doctor Google.” As people are going to Google to search for symptoms, he wanted to ensure that people are aware that not all headache indicates you have a tumor in your brain.

There is one idea that has been considered internally, which is to create a separate page just for searches on health. However, so far, we have no information on how the company intends to make money on that feature or whether it is serious about making it happens.

Before the arrival of Feinberg, the search giant has been finding a way to improve the quality of its search results, given that a large number of people use its tool to look up information relating to health. Feinberg is also working to develop these projects.

Google has also made public that it is collaborating with Mayo Clinic to offer better health-related content. In 2017, it released a screening test to diagnose clinical depression.