Google Enhances Health-Related Features with AI Integration in Search and Android

Google launches new healthcare-related features for Search, Android

Google on Tuesday announced new products and features aimed at healthcare use cases, including improved overviews in Google Search for health queries, medical records APIs, and new health-focused "open" AI models. In Search, Google says it's using AI and ranking systems to expand "knowledge panel" answers on thousands of health-related topics, and adding support for healthcare queries in Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese on mobile. Search already provided knowledge panel answers for ailments such as the flu or the common cold, but the update greatly expands the number of topics the knowledge panels cover, the company said. Google is also debuting a Search feature it's calling "What People Suggest" on mobile in the U.S. to highlight content from users with shared experiences relating to health conditions. For instance, if someone asks about common exercises for people dealing with arthritis, What People Suggest will collate reports from various forums around the web using AI. What People Suggest builds on capabilities like Google's personal health stories feature on YouTube, and seems pretty clearly aimed at keeping people from leaving Search for Reddit and other sources of health advice. "While people come to Search to find reliable medical information from experts, they also value hearing from others who have similar experiences," Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer at Google, wrote in a blog post provided to TechCrunch. "Using AI, we're able to organize different perspectives from online discussions into easy-to-understand themes, helping you quickly grasp what people are saying." Google on Tuesday also launched new medical records APIs globally for its Health Connect platform for Android devices. These will help collect data from medical providers and let users see this data across different apps, as well as make it easier to access the info on devices like phones, Google said. "These APIs enable apps to read and write medical record information like allergies, medications, immunizations, and lab results in standard FHIR format," DeSalvo explained in the blog post. "With these additions, Health Connect supports over 50 data types across activity, sleep, nutrition, vitals, and now medical records -- making it easier to connect your everyday health data with data from your doctor's office." In other product announcements pertaining to health, Google said that the Loss of Pulse Detection feature on its Pixel Watch 3 smartwatch, which has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will launch by the end of March in the U.S. The feature can detect when you've experienced a loss of pulse -- for example, due to primary cardiac arrest, respiratory or circulatory failure, overdose, or poisoning -- and automatically prompt a call to emergency services if you're unresponsive. Google also unveiled new open AI models for drug discovery called TxGemma, following the company's launch of a collection of Gemini AI models for multimodal use cases in healthcare. TxGemma is set to be released in the coming weeks.

How Google is using AI to improve its medical advice reputation

Google's annual health event, "The Check Up," just wrapped, and like most areas these days, a healthy injection of AI is on the way. At the event, Google shared how it's using AI to improve medicine for physicians, researchers, and ordinary people. Also: Google's AI co-scientist is 'test-time scaling' on steroids. What that means for research Several of Google's initiatives are directly for doctors and medical scientists, such as an AI-powered co-researcher that helps develop hypotheses, an AI model that helps drug developers understand how safe or efficient a new medicine might be (hopefully giving in-development drugs an easier path to clearance), and a Gemini model that helps physicians create more personalized cancer treatment options. A few of them, though, are more focused on consumers. Also: This AI tool studied medical journals to answer your health queries How Google is using AI to improve your health Here's a look at three big ways Google is using AI to help you gain a better understanding of your overall health. 1. More credible health advice in Google Search We've all heard the advice, "Never Google your symptoms." Google is trying to change that mindset by offering more helpful health results in Search and in AI Overviews. Also: What if AI ran ER triage? Here's how it sped up patient care in real-world tests Google says it's improving AI Overviews on health topics to help users find "credible and relevant information about health, from common illnesses to rare conditions." It's also providing knowledge panels on common conditions like the flu or the cold and introducing a new feature labeled "What People Suggest." Using AI, Google says it's organizing different online discussions into easy-to-understand themes, giving you an overview of what people with similar conditions are saying. 2. Easier collaboration across different health apps Every medical group has its own app these days, and if you visit different doctors in different groups, it can be confusing to remember where a certain record is. To help ease that confusion, Google is launching its own Medical Records APIs globally in Health Connect. Also: How AI could supercharge your glucose monitor - and catch other health issues Google says these APIs will connect your health data from your device with data from your doctor's office to let apps have a total view of your health. "Important medical information like your allergies, medications, immunizations and information, lab results, and prescriptions," Google says, "will always be available for you, protected and private." 3. A life-saving addition to the Pixel Watch Last month, the Pixel Watch 3 got perhaps its most important feature ever with the addition of pulse loss detection. If your watch senses that you don't have a pulse, it will automatically place a call to emergency services. This feature already exists in 14 European countries, but it's coming to America by the end of this month.

Google to Expand AI Answers to Medical Queries in Search Results

Alphabet Inc.'s Google said it will expand its health-related artificial intelligence summaries in search, part of an effort to improve its influence in the health sector. The company also said Tuesday that it has been updating a new AI system to help researchers speed their scientific and biomedical discoveries. "These updates show the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe," Karen DeSalvo, Google's chief health officer, wrote in a blog post timed to a company event in New York.

Google is using AI to display crowdsourced medical information

Since the start of March, Google has been aggressively expanding the availability of AI Overviews, dropping the requirement that you need to be logged into your Google account to access the feature. Now the company is bringing yet another AI tool to Search. The next time you go online to find medical information on your phone, you may see a new "What People Suggest" panel at the top of Google. Using AI, the feature will organize "different perspectives from online discussions into easy-to-understand themes," explains Google. For instance, say you or one of your family members suffers from arthritis, the panel will curate "real insights from people who also have the condition," with links so you can dig deeper. The feature is currently only available on mobile devices in the US. Google doesn't say how it plans to prevent the panel from surfacing misinformation. Instead, it mentions that it has worked to improve AI Overviews related to health topics so they "continue to meet a high bar for clinical factuality." However, even after Google implemented additional safeguards to prevent AI Overviews from generating inaccurate summaries, and began using Gemini 2.0 to tackle more complicated questions, the feature can still return bizarre answers. For instance, an AI Overview recently told my colleague Kris Holt that the first day Canadians can start contributing toward their RRSP for 2026 starts on March 61. At the same event where Google debuted the What People Suggest panel, the company had other health-related announcements. The search giant said it was releasing a series of new Medical Records APIs through its Health Connect platform. With the update, Google says it will be easier to connect your health data with data from your doctor's office. Google also provided an update on the Pixel Watch 3's loss of pulse detection feature. After announcing it was coming soon with the latest Pixel feature drop, Google now says it will roll out at end of the month.

Google announces new health-care AI updates for Search

Google on Tuesday announced health-care updates to Search, including a way for people with specific health conditions to compare their experiences with others. The company unveiled a new feature called "What People Suggest," which uses AI to pull together online commentary from patients with similar diagnoses. A patient with arthritis would be able to look up how other people with the condition approach exercise, for instance. The feature is available on mobile devices in the U.S., Google said. Google said it has also expanded its knowledge panels, or the information boxes that appear to the right of search results, to cover "thousands" more health topics. The panels are coming to new countries and languages, including Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese, starting on mobile devices. The tech giant has launched several health-care projects and features over the years, but it has struggled to outline a consistent business strategy within the sector. The company built out a formal Google Health unit starting around 2018, which swelled to more than 500 employees, but it was dissolved in 2021. Karen DeSalvo, Google's chief health officer, told CNBC months later that the company was "still all-in on health." In recent years, many of Google's health-care initiatives have centered around AI. Google introduced artificial intelligence summaries called AI Overviews last year, and the feature shows a quick summary of answers to search questions at the very top of Search. The rollout was rocky, as users were quick to share examples AI tool giving incorrect and controversial responses, like encouraging users to add glue to pizza. AI Overviews appear for some health-related queries, like "How do I know if I have the flu?" But some experts have encouraged users to use caution with these answers, according to a December report from The Senior List. Out of more than 200 health searches, a panel of medical experts said 70% Google's AI Overviews were considered risky. Google said Tuesday that recent health-focused advancements with its Gemini models have allowed the company to improve AI Overviews for health topics. In late 2023, Google announced MedLM, a suite of AI models designed specifically for health-care, to help clinicians and researchers carry out complex studies, summarize doctor-patient interactions and complete other tasks. The company also unveiled Vertex AI Search for Healthcare that year, which is a generative AI tool that clinicians can use to search for information across disparate medical records.

Sick and need answers? AI Overviews on Search now cover more health topics

There will be a new feature on Search called "What People Suggest." AI Overviews in Search are getting a health-related boost to help people find relevant information on conditions and illnesses. It is also getting support for more languages and a new feature aimed at helping you find information from others who have your condition. Today, Google announced a few changes coming to AI Overviews. The Mountain View-based firm says it is using AI and ranking systems to further improve its "knowledge panel." With this change, Google states that AI Overviews will now cover "thousands more health topics." These knowledge panel answers already covered common topics like colds and the flu, but now it will be able to address a wider range of ailments. In addition covering more topics, you'll now be able to get AI Overviews for your health queries in a few more languages. The company is now expanding the feature to more countries and adding support for Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. This expansion is starting on mobile, with support elsewhere to follow. In other news, you may remember when Google announced its Loss of Pulse Detection feature on Pixel Watch 3 last year. When it launched, it was initially available in the UK, France, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Google says the feature will start rolling out to users in the US at the end of March.

Google reveals 6 ways it's using AI to improve health care, from crowdsourced advice to personalized cancer treatments

It has also created a model that could improve AI-powered drug discovery At its annual The Check Up event, Google has shared six ways it says it's using AI to improve health care and advances in medicine and science. The company claims "AI can lead to scientific progress and cutting-edge products that help improve health outcomes for people all around the world." While some of the benefits of tools like Gemini are much more obvious when it comes to sifting through emails or doing research, the medical application can appear less obvious, although no less exciting. Here are the six developments the company shared, including one that I think might cause some concern. The first development is a change to Google's AI Overviews in Search, which I believe will have the biggest day-to-day impact on Google users and should be treated with the most caution. Google says Search and AI Overviews "to find credible and relevant information about health, from common illnesses to rare conditions," and that it's improving the AI Overview results on health topics to be "so they're more relevant, comprehensive and continue to meet a high bar for clinical factuality." The change is a new What people suggest section. "While people come to Search to find reliable medical information from experts, they also value hearing from others who have similar experiences," Google says. To that end, AI will organize different perspectives from online discussions to help you sift through helpful experiences from people in similar situations. The example Google uses is a person dealing with arthritis who might want to know how other people with the condition exercise. Obviously, there's the potential for misinformation to surface here. Google's image includes a disclaimer that the results are "for informational purposes only" and suggests consulting a medical professional for advice or diagnosis. As with everything you read on Google, a level of caution and discernment is required, all of this information already exists on the internet, Google is just trying to make the helpful stuff easier to find. Real-world results will determine whether or not it's successful. Google has also launched a new Medical Records API globally in Health Connect, which lets apps read and write medical record information like allergies and medications in a standard format that you can share with your doctor's office. Announced last month, the Pixel Watch 3, one of the best Android smartwatches, is getting Loss of Pulse Detection in the US at the end of March. The tool can automatically call emergency services and notify people close by if your heart stops beating. Google's recently launched AI co-scientist can help researchers "parse large volumes of scientific literature and generate high-quality, novel hypotheses." Google says the tool won't automate the scientific process but is designed "to help experts uncover new ideas and accelerate their work." The company says it's already being used in Imperial College London and Stanford. Google has launched a new collection of Gemma-based models it hopes "will help improve the efficiency of AI-powered drug discovery." The AI can "understand regular text and the structures of different therapeutic entities, like small molecules, chemicals, and proteins," which means researchers can use it to predict how safe or effective new therapies and drugs might be. Finally, Google highlighted how it's helping a hospital in the Netherlands develop an AI tool that can "accelerate the identification of personalized cancer treatments by combining vast public medical data and de-identified patient data." It can reportedly generate "summaries of treatment options and relevant medical publications," giving Doctors more time to focus on patient care. The efficacy and reach of all of these initiatives remain to be seen, but Google's update is a clear sign that as AI continues to permeate the world around us, its advance into every facet of life including medicine appears inevitable. With lives at stake and patient well-being on the line, getting it right is more important than ever, but the rewards for success are also infinitely greater.

Google says it's using AI to respond to more of your ailment searches

Over the last year, Google has been expanding its AI overviews in search results, offering responses compiled with generative AI rather than a list of links. The goal, as you would expect, is to make information directly accessible while helping you save time from clicking each link individually and deciding its merit for yourself. Now, Google seems confident these overviews can help you better with your medical queries too. At its annual health-centric event, The Check Up, Google announced a several ways in which its products will improve how you find information about health-related topics. More specifically, the company said it is now expanding AI overviews in search results "to cover thousands more health topics," beyond the basic ones such as flu. These results are also being expanded to other languages besides English, including Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, for queries made on mobile. In addition, Google brings another feature titled "What People Suggest," which compiles personal advice from forums and public platforms, such as Quora or Reddit, for medical searches. This will be limited to queries made on mobile and only available to users in the U.S. at the moment. Recommended Videos It is vital to emphasize that Google's AI overviews, like any other generative AI product, are susceptible to incorrect responses -- called hallucinations -- and must not be used as the sole source of information. Please enable Javascript to view this content Using AI to aid medical research Besides these improvements to Search, Google has also launched its Medical Records API as part of its Health Connect platform. This will allow medical records stored in a specific format to be shared across multiple health and fitness apps on your Android devices. While AI search results may not fully substitute sound medical advice, Google is expanding access to several lightweight AI models from its Gemma family of models. Google has trained these specific models to help researchers to aid in quicker drug discovery by offering existing knowledge on the effect of certain molecules. Additionally, Google is also piloting an AI tool called Capricorn that can assist doctors, more specifically pediatric oncologists, to offer personalized treatments to young cancer patients at a hospital in the Netherlands.

6 health AI updates we shared at The Check Up

Today at The Check Up, Google's annual health event, we shared how we're using AI to help improve health outcomes for everyone, everywhere. 1. Helpful health results in Search People use Search and features like AI Overviews to find credible and relevant information about health, from common illnesses to rare conditions. Since AI Overviews launched last year, people are more satisfied with their search results, and they're asking longer, more complex questions. And with recent health-focused advancements on Gemini models, we continue to further improve AI Overviews on health topics so they're more relevant, comprehensive and continue to meet a high bar for clinical factuality. We've also continued to provide knowledge panels on common health topics, like the flu or the common cold, and help people connect with reliable sources across the web. Now, using AI and our best-in-class quality and ranking systems, we've been able to expand these types of overviews to cover thousands more health topics. We're also expanding to more countries and languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, starting on mobile. While people come to Search to find reliable medical information from experts, they also value hearing from others who have similar experiences. That's why we're making it even easier to find this type of information on Search with a new feature labeled "What People Suggest." Using AI, we're able to organize different perspectives from online discussions into easy-to-understand themes, helping you quickly grasp what people are saying. For example, a person dealing with arthritis might want to know how others with this condition exercise. With this feature, they can quickly uncover real insights from people who also have the condition, with links to click out and learn more. "What People Suggest" is available on mobile devices in the U.S.

How Google is Improving Health Outcomes with New AI Features?

Google's AI-powered tools revolutionize healthcare and wellness Imagine a world where we can detect illness before symptoms appear, all with a health device just a tap away. This isn't just a futuristic concept; with Google's groundbreaking AI innovations, we are moving swiftly toward a reality where health diagnostics evolve from mere speed to predictive analysis. These advancements are transforming the healthcare field in remarkable ways. Google has introduced new features in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enhance health improvement. One significant innovation is predictive analysis in personal care, which fundamentally changes how individuals and professionals approach wellness and health. Explore how Google's AI tools can make health and healthcare more accessible, accurate, and effective.