Google

By  Dave Muoio 09:00 am March 16, 2021
Google headlined today's announcement of its second-generation Nest Hub smart display with a breakdown of its newest features: contactless sleep monitoring and data-driven personalized recommendations for those struggling to get a good night's rest. When placed on the bedside and calibrated, the Nest Hub's Sleep Sensing feature uses Google's Soli – a low-energy radar sensor previously tapped to...
Google Care Studio
By  Laura Lovett 12:03 pm February 23, 2021
Google is looking to tackle EHR navigations issues with the creation of Care Studio, a clinician-facing search tool that helps organize patients' medical records. The tool is meant to be used alongside the EHR in order to streamline workflows. Caregivers can use the platform to look through patients' records across different EHRs. The tool is also able to synch up data from various health systems...
Screen examples of the features on three smartphones
By  Dave Muoio 11:00 am February 4, 2021
Google Health has announced a new wellness feature coming to its Google Fit mobile app that uses machine learning to give users heart rate and respiratory rate readings without the need for any hardware other than their smartphone's camera. The two tools are slated to launch for all Pixel devices in the next month, and will come to additional Android devices running version 6 within the months to...
Google vaccine info examples on two phone screens
By  Laura Lovett 01:39 pm January 25, 2021
Google is now focusing its coronavirus efforts on vaccine distribution, with a new vaccine information and location search and a $150 million investment in vaccine education and access. In the next few weeks patients will be able to tap into Google's search and maps to find COVID-19 vaccination locations. The program is starting in Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, with more states on...
By  Dave Muoio 11:28 am January 14, 2021
Fourteen-and-a-half months later, Google has finally completed its acquisition of health wearables company Fitbit. The news was announced this morning in complementary statements from Fitbit cofounder and (now previous) CEO James Park and Rick Osterloh, Google's SVP of devices and services. "This is just the beginning because becoming part of the Google family means we can do even more to inspire...
Australian regulator rejects Google’s Fitbit undertaking, delays acquisition decision.
By  Mallory Hackett 02:35 pm December 23, 2020
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Tuesday rejected an undertaking proposed by Google to address competition concerns over its planned acquisition of Fitbit. The ACCC in June released a list of issues it had with the merger that included concerns that Google would be given too much access to people’s data, as well as decreasing competition in the wearables market. Google...
By  MobiHealthNews 10:15 am December 22, 2020
Considering the size and scope of Alphabet, it should be little surprise that the company and its subsidiaries (Google, Google Cloud and Verily, to name a few) have become deeply ingrained in the healthcare ecosystem over the last several years. The tech giant maintained the momentum in 2020 with efforts focused on artificial intelligence, data flow and digital clinical research – and also sought...
By  Dave Muoio 12:29 pm December 17, 2020
Following months of regulatory investigation, the European Commission has officially signed off on Google's $2.1 billion purchase of health-wearable-maker Fitbit. Still, the go-ahead is contingent on a handful of commitments from the tech company that focus on its competitive practices across advertising, digital health APIs and smart device interoperability. "We can approve the proposed...
Google phone screen example listing COVID-19 vaccines
By  Laura Lovett 02:18 pm December 10, 2020
Now that several vaccines have come out with promising results, vaccine misinformation is also growing. Tech giant Google is now zeroing in on this potential issue by implementing new strategies to coping with misinformation, according to a new blog post.  Users in the U.K. will now be able to use a new search feature on the platform in order to look up COVID-19 vaccine information, as well as...
Images of the Google Health Studies app and its Respiratory Health Study
By  Dave Muoio 08:00 am December 9, 2020
In a bid to improve clinical research participation and engagement, the Google Health team announced this morning the launch of a new Android app that streamlines study recruitment for consumers and shows them how survey and sensor data are being employed for health research. Off the bat, the Google Health Studies app allows users to view a list of open studies and review the inclusion criteria...