NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 29: A person wears a mask in front of Google offices in Chelsea as … [+]
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According to an internal note obtained by Insider, an initiative to consolidate various health initiatives in Google is closed.
The news comes just days after healthcare computer company Cerner announced that David Feinberg, leader of Google Health, would join his company as chairman and CEO.
Feinberg joined Google in 2018 to lead the initiative to organize Google’s fragmented health initiatives, which at the time overlapped with different companies. The reincarnation of Google Health also hoped to offer more AI and other new technologies to traditional healthcare systems to better digitize their processes.
It looks like the future of Google Health will look like the past: Jeff Dean, senior vice president of Google Research and Health efforts, said the unit will cease to function as a unified organization. Instead, a group that builds a health record search platform for doctors will inform you directly.
That’s while Google’s AI-focused healthcare initiatives will inform Yossi Matias, Google’s vice president of search and AI. Google Health Director Karen DeSalvo will now report on Kent Walker, Google’s legal director. DeSalvo provided guidance on clinical and regulatory issues to the Google Health team.
BEVERLY HILLS, CA – APRIL 29: David Feinberg, vice president of Google Healthcare, participates in … [+]
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Dean hired Feinberg after a month-long search, which was followed by an unfortunate series of events for the Google Health team. A partnership between Google and the Ascension healthcare system received a Senate review, which raised privacy concerns. Despite the promise of closer collaboration between all of Google’s healthcare companies, Alphabet’s Verily unit and Google Cloud continued to create their own health-focused products.
Insider reported in June that the company blended 130 employees of health-focused initiatives into its Fitbit and Search divisions. This problem occurred when many healthcare professionals believed that the search giant was reorienting its healthcare initiatives into consumer products, such as FitBit health trackers.
The split should not be confused with a personal health registration platform launched by Google. The vision of the product was to create a comprehensive repository of data and health information that would help both patients and physicians, but this product closed in 2012.