Tag: Google

Google flexes its health care AI muscle

Illustration of a robot arm lifting a medical cross

Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios

Google showed off an array of new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven health care tools on Tuesday, from a souped-up chatbot that can shed light on your medical symptoms to enhanced search features that tell you if a doctor takes Medicaid.

Why it matters: There’s an arms race among big tech companies to infuse their products with AI — but the results, particularly in health care, can have unwanted consequences or pitfalls, like racial bias, privacy concerns and ethical problems.

Driving the news: The “large language model” that Google has been building for the medical world — an AI chatbot called Med-PaLM 2 — now consistently passes medical exam questions with a score of 85{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f}, placing it at “expert” doctor level, the company said.

  • That’s an 18{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} improvement from the system’s previous performance, per the company, and “far surpasses similar AI models.”
  • A rival generative AI tool, ChatGPT, also passed the medical exams — but just barely. (ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, just released a new, more powerful version of its underlying tech.)
  • Google’s system is being trained to “retrieve medical knowledge, accurately answer medical questions, and provide reasoning,” the company says.

Yes, but: Google acknowledges AI’s shortcomings in the medical realm.

  • “There’s still a lot of work to be done to make sure [Med-PaLM 2] can work in real-world settings,” reads a blog post from Yossi Matias, a Google vice president of engineering and research, and Greg Corrado, its head of health AI.
  • Google found “significant gaps” when the tool was “tested against 14 criteria — including scientific factuality, precision, medical consensus, reasoning, bias and harm,” per the post.
  • “We look forward to working with researchers and the global medical community to close these gaps and understand how this technology can help improve health delivery.”

Meanwhile: Google’s conversational AI technology Duplex has called hundreds of thousands of U.S. health care providers to see if they accept Medicaid. The results are being displayed in Google Search, ahead of a March 31 re-enrollment deadline.

  • Google Search results will also soon highlight “providers that identify as community health centers offering free or low-cost care,” the company said.
  • And an improved version of Fitbit’s health metrics dashboard will soon be available — in some cases without a subscription — to help people map changes and trends in their breathing rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen.

What they’re saying: “The future of health is consumer-driven,” Karen DeSalvo, Google’s chief health officer, told reporters.

  • “People will expect a mobile-first experience with more personalized insights, services and care.”

Zoom out: Google is also deploying AI tools to help offer high-quality, low-cost medical diagnostics globally.

  • Ultrasound devices with Google AI are being used to detect breast cancer in Taiwan and determine gestational age in expectant mothers in Kenya.
  • Another Google AI tool that checks chest X-rays for signs of tuberculosis is being rolled out in Sub-Saharan Africa.
A schematic image of an ultrasound of a pregnant uterus and a screen that shows gestational age.
Google’s AI-powered ultrasound system. Image: Courtesy of Google

Between the lines: The company is acutely aware of criticisms that “Dr. Google” can sometimes lead users to misleading or dangerous health guidance.

  • Another new YouTube feature helps people “find human answers” to their health questions, said Garth Graham, director and head of health care and public health at Google/YouTube.

Google also announced a partnership with ThroughLine, which connects users to free mental health crisis support in more than 100 countries.

  • “This will increase the number of crisis helplines that appear at the top of search results,” reads a blog post from DeSalvo. The feature is aimed at “searches related to suicide, domestic violence and other personal crisis topics.”

The big picture: Even as they take breathtaking strides toward improving health care with AI, tech companies and others have been stumbling with what they’ve unleashed.

  • Older people covered by Medicare Advantage are finding their benefits cut off by AI algorithms no matter how dire their medical needs, a Stat News investigation found.
  • Verily Life Sciences, a unit of Google parent company Alphabet that focuses on treatment personalization, started laying off staff in January, per the Wall Street Journal.

On the plus side, AI is starting to detect breast cancers that radiologists miss, as the New York Times reports.

  • The development is “one of the most tangible signs to date of how AI can improve public health,” per the Times — yet the technology produces too many false positives and still needs to “show it can produce accurate results on women of all ages, ethnicities and body types.”

The bottom line: Medicine will always need to rely on a healthy mix of technology and human know-how.

  • “AI on its own cannot solve all of health care’s problems,” Alan Karthikesalingam, the surgeon-scientist who leads Google Health’s machine learning research group, said Tuesday.
  • “Medicine, after all, is about caring for people.”

Top health-related Google searches of 2022

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CNN
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You can study a large amount from a search historical past.

This thirty day period, Google unveiled its annual “Year in Search” listing to exhibit which terms observed the maximum spikes over the previous yr. The roundup features some perception into what web customers all around the world cared about, ended up curious about and worried about in 2022.

A single significant topic is significantly absent this year: Covid-19. Past year, vaccination and stopping an infection have been of fantastic curiosity, but this yr saw no mention of coronavirus in the top health and fitness and wellness lookups.

As a substitute, this year’s queries concentrated on physical and mental restoration — how to get stronger physically and how to cope with concerns like anxiousness, melancholy, focus deficit hyperactivity problem and obsessive-compulsive problem.

Here’s a breakdown of 2022 in Google lookups and some methods to tackle these subject areas going into 2023.

Exercise routines were a major aim of conversation this year: “Body pounds exercises,” “weekly workout routines,” “exercising for psychological wellness,” and “core exercise sessions at the gym” all were among the the well-liked wellbeing searches.

Human body-pounds routines are a superior obtain point for physical exercise because you really do not require pricey products, and you can develop a foundation for eventual pounds schooling, reported Dana Santas, CNN fitness skilled and a brain-system coach in professional sports activities, in a past story.

She laid out a 10-minute workout to get begun.

Top health-related Google searches of 2022

Consider this 10-minute human body-bodyweight exercise session


10:46

– Resource:
CNN

If you are searching to go further more and make a regular physical exercise regimen, a 2021 megastudy discovered that the keys are to make a prepare, make in reminders and reward you for sticking to it.

Google users requested “how to deal with tension,” “how to end a panic assault,” “how to remedy depression” and “focus with ADHD.” They also seemed up great psychological health methods for little ones, with queries for breathing workouts for kids.

It could not be stunning that a lot of men and women were focused on coping and anxiety, specially in gentle of an ongoing worldwide pandemic, financial problems, and the changes related with returning to faculty and workplaces.

Though tension is a typical physiological response that all folks encounter, it can slide into a intense ailment like anxiousness or melancholy if left unchecked. Just one detail to search for is regardless of whether the feeling goes away immediately after a tense function has ended, stated Dr. Gail Saltz, medical affiliate professor of psychiatry at the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare facility in New York Metropolis.

Worry can also exacerbate mental ailments like melancholy and obsessive-compulsive ailment, Saltz claimed in a 2021 interview with CNN.

If you suspect you may well have serious stress or yet another psychological health disorder, you must communicate to a reliable friend or household member to see whether or not they have recognized differences and access out to a psychological overall health skilled, said Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble, psychologist and founder of the AAKOMA Project, a youth psychological overall health nonprofit, in a 2021 story.

The quest for improved psychological and bodily health and fitness didn’t end at a rapid world wide web research, in accordance to the details.

Among the common conditions ended up queries for more methods on mental overall health, like books, podcasts and journaling methods aimed at increasing wellness.

“Expressive crafting is effective for a variety of factors,” claimed James Pennebaker, a psychologist, researcher and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Acknowledging an upsetting event has price, he included in a past CNN tale. “And crafting about it also allows the human being uncover that means or realize it.”

There are also guided and formatted journals to assist continue to keep you likely.

1 substantial improve this year was the addition of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for mental wellbeing crises. The range is as straightforward as three digits: 988.

Those numerals were being among the well being-related searches that noticed a surge this 12 months.

The dialing code is readily available across the United States and is intended to be much easier to obtain for folks in psychological well being crises, related to 911.

“One of the objectives of 988 is to be certain that people today get the support they need to have when they need to have it, exactly where they require it. And so, when a person phone calls 988, they can be expecting to have a discussion with a educated, compassionate crisis counselor who will converse with them about what they’re experiencing,” mentioned Dr. Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, the administrator of the US Department of Well being and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Psychological Health and fitness Expert services Administration in an interview with CNN in July.

“If it’s the scenario that they need to have even more intervention, then most likely the crisis counselor will join them with a neighborhood cellular crisis crew,” she additional.