Sunday, May 6, 2018

How Google Plans To Use AI To Reinvent The $3 Trillion US Healthcare Industry

From CB Insights:
Google is betting that the future of healthcare is going to be structured data and AI. The company is applying AI to disease detection, new data infrastructure, and potentially insurance. In this report we explore Google's many healthcare initiatives and areas of potential future expansion.

Google has always seen itself as more than a search and advertising company.
Now it’s turning its focus to healthcare, betting that its AI prowess can create a powerful new paradigm for the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease.

In short, Google seems to be going after the healthcare space from every possible angle.
For example, did you know that Google has a project to release sterilized mosquitoes to control the spread of infectious disease? Or that the company has started a limited commercial rollout of its diabetes management program? Or that it appears to be exploring insurance?
In this analysis, we dive deep into how Google is pushing healthcare forward with a focus on data and AI, including:
  • The specific disease areas where Google is studying diagnostics and management — including diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease, and heart disease, among others
  • How Google is rebuilding the healthcare data infrastructure layer to potentially become the new data pipes for health giants
  • Possible areas of expansion, including hardware for providers, insurance and more
  • How Google could make eventually money off its many disparate healthcare bets
  • Obstacles between where the company is today and where it’s trying to go
Note: For simplicity we use “Google” as shorthand for the larger Alphabet company, under which many of these healthcare initiatives fall. We explain the Alphabet structure below.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Google’s structure & AI advantage

GOOGLE PRIORITIZES AI

As Google enters healthcare, it’s leaning heavily on its expertise in AI. Health data is getting digitized and structured, from a new electronic record standard to imaging to DNA sequencing. Google is both helping speed up this process by creating new means of ingesting health data and betting that it can use AI to make sense of the data quickly and potentially more accurately than current methods.
Among the big 5 tech giants (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon), Google emphasizes its progress on machine learning much more than the rest.
As software, and more specifically artificial intelligence, becomes a differentiating factor in the healthcare space, Google is well-positioned.

The company is doubling down on the number of research papers it publishes, opening more AI research centers around the world, and developing its own chips and hardware dedicated to running AI/ML processes. In addition, Google is the most active investor/ acquirer of AI companies among big tech companies, scooping up talent and building relationships with up-and-coming AI applications....
...MUCH MORE