Google takes on healthcare with new open-source initiative

Google has announced its new suite of open-source components to help accelerate the development of digital health solutions, named Open Health Stack. It focuses on standards, security, and advanced analytics.

Yesterday, Google held "The Check Up with Google Health 2023" event on YouTube, featuring some of the important faces of the company, including the chief health officer, Dr. Karen DeSalvo. The participants went through multiple subjects, one of them being the new Open Health Stack program. It aims to let developers build health-related apps centered around the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards. It is the latest version of the HL7 standard for building modern patient-centered healthcare applications.

With its new open-source program, Google promises faster building times, enhanced privacy, and unlocked insights. The program gives developers access to Android FHIR SDK alongside a design guideline to speed up the process and help them build their apps. Open Health Stack is not a managed service; developers can find their own solutions using the given suite of building blocks. Google has also collaborated with the World Health Organization and a community of developers on the program.

OHS use cases

"OHS has been designed to address the needs of developers building digital health solutions for health workers who often operate in areas with poor connectivity. Solutions built using OHS components can support any kind of healthcare program, and through our collaboration with the World Health Organization, OHS based solutions are able to run the WHO Smart Guidelines content that makes evidence based care easy to deploy," says the company when asked about its use cases.

"The Check Up" started back in 2021; this year, Google held the third event. Healthcare is surely one of the most important areas of technology that must be involved more, and Google is expanding the area for developers with its latest move. Besides, the company won't receive, collect, store, or process any data. Yesterday, Cerebral's scandalous data breach once again reminded us of the importance of personal data privacy.

This is not the first time we have seen Google taking a step into the healthcare world. At last year's event, the company covered multiple subjects, including Fitbit's heart health support, the latest COVID-19 innovations on Google Search, and two new projects to make healthcare accessible for everyone.

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