By Rohini Kundu
Google Health’s much-awaited event, the Checkup, held on March 19th, 2024, at Pier’s 57 Manhattan office, unveiled some exciting new innovations that could transform healthcare.
The tech giant shared the progress made on several high-profile initiatives related to artificial intelligence for health.
From AI assisting doctors in detecting health conditions quickly to understanding test reports to being a personal health coach, Google Health’s innovations seem promising.
Last year, Google Health launched MedLM, an LLM fine-tuned for healthcare.
Dr. Karen De Salvo, Google’s chief health officer, told her audience at the Checkup that these new AI technologies will make healthcare accessible to all.
She also said that these technologies will never replace doctors; they will replace doctors who don’t use them.She stressed that AI is a tool clinicians can use in human-to-human interactions.
4 highlights from The Checkup 2024
- Developing a personal health LLM: Google is currently partnering with Google Research, doctors, and health and wellness experts to create large language models for personal health (LLM). These models will give you personalized health advice like a fitness coach based on your health and fitness data. Fitbit and Pixel device users will benefit from health recommendations based on their sleep schedule, heart rate, exercise intensity, and other metrics.
- Adapting Gemini for Healthcare Applications: One of Google’s latest research studies showed that the Gemini model improved performance in the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination. Google’s research team is now exploring how the Gemini model could go beyond medical licensing examination and be able to process high volumes of data. The Gemini model could be used to interpret large volumes of patient data and assist the clinician in diagnosing and forming a treatment plan. This technology will also help clinicians access patients’ medical data buried in records. For instance, radiologists read an X-ray, interpret it, and send the report to a physician, who will then form a treatment plan based on the report. AI models like Gemini can assist the radiologist in finding errors or omissions in the data or even help generate the report itself. This will lead to better treatment outcomes and reduce the chances of human error.
- AI’s potential to assist patients and clinicians: Earlier this year, Google launched AMIE (Artificial Medical Intelligence Explorer), which will help improve doctor-patient conversations. AMIE is based on an LLM. Its primary function would be to ask clinically relevant questions to the patient that will lead to better diagnosis and treatment outcomes. Greg Corrado, head of health AI at Google Research, said that the model has been trained to ask questions as respectfully as possible and assist the individual in making informed health decisions. AMIE has been tested in simulated environments. While it is not equivalent to a natural setting, scientists at Google Research agree that the initial results are positive.
- Google Health’s collaboration with Apollo Health for better disease outcomes: AI is transforming the diagnosis and treatment approach for deadly diseases like tuberculosis, breast cancer, and lung cancer. Tuberculosis affects almost 10 million people globally and results in the deaths of 1.3 million people all over the world. Yet, if detected early, tuberculosis is fully curable. Given the lack of trained radiologists who can interpret chest X-rays to identify signs of TB, Google is training its AI systems to detect early signs of TB. Similarly, AI can also aid in lung and breast cancer screenings. In India, scarcity of trained professionals means that treatment is often delayed due to the lack of access to healthcare. AI’s accurate interpretation of mammograms can significantly improve health outcomes and save lives.
Conclusion
This year’s Checkup highlighted a crucial revelation: AI will not replace doctors. AI’s integration into healthcare doesn’t mean doctors and other skilled healthcare workers will be made redundant. Instead, AI will assist doctors in detecting health concerns faster and more accurately for better treatment outcomes.
AI can also mediate between doctors and patients, as shown by Google’s AMIE. AI has the potential to act like a personalized health coach and analyze health data to provide health advice. AI’s integration into healthcare will help compensate for the lack of trained specialists and make healthcare accessible for all.
