Google shakes up healthcare strategy in 2021: A timeline of key developments

Google Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo, MD, tells Bloomberg that Google's new strategy is an effort to embed healthcare research and initiatives into its core products, such as Google Search and YouTube, rather than launching new commercial services. Feb. 18: The Star Tribune reports that Google is planning to open its first office in Minnesota as part of its ongoing health partnership with Mayo Clinic. March 2: Highmark Health builds on its tech partnership with Google Cloud by launching a six-year collaboration with Verily. May 26: Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare inks a multiyear collaboration with Google Cloud focused on building a health data analytics platform to support the health system's clinical and operational workflows. 1: Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health deploys Google's Workspace platform to improve patient and employee collaborations across its 140 hospitals. Under the collaboration, the health system is using Google Cloud to protect its data as it deploys AI in clinical areas, including newborn screenings, mammography screenings, prostate cancer screenings, sepsis detection and COVID-19 detection. Dec. 8: Google partners with the World Health Organization to build an open-source developer kit to empower healthcare providers in low- and middle-income countries. March 9: Google Cloud makes its new healthcare consent management application programming interface generally available for health tech developers and clinical researchers who work with patients' health data. April 9: Google enters the early stages of a new project aiming to explore and develop a consumer-facing health records tool for Android users. Google is not directly partnering with any healthcare organizations on the project, which could support the development of a medical records tool similar to Apple's Health Records app, STAT reports.