Google CEO Eyes Major Opportunity in Healthcare, Says Will Protect Privacy

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that healthcare offers the biggest potential over the next five to 10 years for using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve outcomes, and pledged that Google will heed privacy concerns, reports Reuters . U.S. lawmakers have raised issues about Google's access to the health records of tens of millions of Americans. Ascension, which runs 150 hospitals and over 50 senior living communities across the United States, is Google's biggest cloud computing customer in healthcare. "When we work with hospitals, the data belongs to the hospitals," Pichai said. Google has devoted several years developing AI to automatically analyze magnetic resonance imaging scans and other data to detect diseases and make predictions to enhance outcomes and cut costs. In November lawmakers asked the company to provide information about other health systems that supply data to Google, whether Ascension clients will be permitted to opt out of the project, and whether the data will be used for advertising. Pichai noted there are already strong regulatory privacy safeguards that establish an operational framework for Google.