Google Health Vice President David Feinberg will become CEO and chairman of electronic health records company Cerner in October, taking over from current CEO Brent Shafer, Cerner announced Thursday.
Feinberg had previously led Google’s healthcare initiatives since 2018 in a role that was created when he was hired.
Google’s Feinberg exit suggests that the search giant may be reevaluating its ambition to create new products in its Google Health division to break into the multimillion-dollar healthcare technology market.
“The real pressure is” will this really help millions of people? “Feinberg said at a conference in June.” Is it a Google scale? That’s the pressure. “
“Google deeply believes in the power of technology to improve health and wellness and we have increased our investments in health across the enterprise,” the company said. “We appreciate David’s leadership and guidance over the past few years to help accelerate our health efforts and wish him all the best.” The company did not announce a new leadership for the Google Health group, but ongoing efforts will continue.
The company is still researching other healthcare technologies in different divisions of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, including Google Cloud’s collaborations with medical companies. As of February 2020, Google Health had more than 500 employees and Feinberg reported to Jeff Dean, Google’s head of artificial intelligence, CNBC reported at the time.
Feinberg also said at the time that his Google bosses did not pressure him on the healthcare team’s revenue.
At Google, one project Feinberg worked on was the partnership to create Covid-19 tracing software with Apple. Although system-integrated applications are widely available, it has not been an important factor in tracking coronavirus outbreaks. He also talked about using YouTube to provide reliable information to doctors and other caregivers.
Feinberg said in June that another major focus was Care Studio, a partnership with Ascension to organize electronic medical records of patients.
He is now at the helm of Cerner, one of the largest providers of electronic health records services, and a company that focuses virtually on software for medical professionals, rather than being a division of a technology giant. information. Feinberg is a doctor and has an MBA. Prior to Google, he headed Geisinger, a health care provider, and was CEO of UCLA hospitals, Cerner said in the announcement.
Cerner’s announcement concludes a CEO search that officially began earlier this year. Cerner’s current president, Donald Trigg, will leave the company, it said in a statement.
Cerner shares rose about 0.5% after hours in the news, and rose more than 1% during the annual period.