Alphabet
GOOGL
is making every effort to revolutionize the healthcare industry on the back of its innovative technologies. This is evident from its latest plans regarding the use of smartphone sensors for health monitoring.
The search giant is aggressively looking into the possible ways of leveraging smartphones to capture heart sounds and eyeball images.
Notably, this will not be a kind of diagnosis. Still, it will notify users about any issues in their hearts or eyes sitting at home so that they become cautious about it beforehand.
Google is reportedly working on using a smartphone’s built-in microphone to detect heartbeats and murmurs when placed over the chest. The readings might help in the early detection of heart valve disorders.
Further, it is working on detecting eye diseases, including those caused by diabetes, from photos captured by smartphone cameras.
These endeavors are likely to bring advancements in the healthcare management field. The efforts will bolster Google’s footprint in the multi-trillion healthcare industry.
Alphabet’s Growing Efforts
The latest move is in sync with the company’s growing initiatives in the healthcare industry.
Apart from the above-mentioned research work, Google is looking into how an AI-powered software can analyze ultrasound screenings taken by less-skilled technicians.
In addition to this, the company’s multi-year partnership with the national hospital chain HCA Healthcare to bring advancement in clinical decision-making remains noteworthy.
Notably, Google aids HCA Healthcare in developing healthcare algorithms, which will likely help in patient monitoring, doctors’ decision-making and boosting operational efficiency. Google Cloud ensures actionable insights and advanced workflows by building a secured data analytics platform for HCA Healthcare.
Its advanced system based on AI, which can efficiently detect and diagnose breast cancer early, is another useful innovation in the healthcare sector.
The company is constantly enjoying strong momentum in the personal health monitoring space on the back of the growing popularity of its Google Fit app, which provides customers access to their health data from Wear OS smartwatches and other devices seamlessly.
Furthermore, Google’s acquisition of wearable fitness company Fitbit is termed as a remarkable buyout in the fitness tracking space. Fitbit’s robust fitness tracker portfolio is likely to continue bolstering Google’s market position.
Healthcare Attracting Tech Behemoths
The growth prospects in the booming healthcare industry are immense. Consequently, apart from Alphabet, the industry has been attracting tech behemoths such as
Amazon
AMZN
,
Apple
AAPL
,
Microsoft
MSFT
and many others to foray into it.
Amazon is constantly trying to disrupt this particular space, driven by the focus on revolutionizing the healthcare sector. The e-commerce giant is leaving no stone unturned to replace the time-consuming traditional healthcare methods with faster and technically efficient processes.
Its cloud-based healthcare service, Amazon HealthLake, is noteworthy. Notably, the service is a HIPAA-eligible one, which helps medical providers, health insurers, and pharmaceutical companies in analyzing their complete data at a petabyte-scale in the cloud.
Apart from this, the growing momentum across the company’s Amazon Halo and Amazon Halo Band, its fitness tracking service and wearable device, respectively, remains a major positive.
Meanwhile, Apple is constantly gaining momentum in the personal health monitor space with its expanding watch family.
The strong adoption of the Apple Watch on the back of useful and advanced features like Cycle Tracking, the Noise app and Activity Trends remain a major positive.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is strengthening its presence in the industry on the back of its well-performing Azure, which is witnessing increasing adoption to support healthcare workloads.
Its recent acquisition of Nuance Communications, which offers conversational AI and cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence for healthcare providers, remains another major tailwind. Nuance represents decades of accumulated healthcare and enterprise AI experience, which will aid Microsoft in strengthening its footprint in the healthcare industry.
Nevertheless, growing healthcare initiatives, backed by a strong inflow of resources via funding rounds, are likely to aid Alphabet’s health-related projects, and keep it ahead of the above-mentioned companies.
Currently, Google’s parent Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see
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