Primum Non Nocere: Healthcare In The Digital Age

Abstract

Internet search has become the first stop in many users' health journeys. Today, about 1 in 20 Google searches are related to healthcare. These queries span a broad range of information needs as people are looking for possible conditions related to their symptoms and are seeking to understand their diagnoses and prescribed treatments, decipher their test results, find pathways of self-care as well as connect to people with similar experiences. This talk will cover the approaches that we at Google have used to meet these diverse user needs. We will also discuss how we constructed and curated the Health Knowledge Graph, a large scale resource of highly accurate medical knowledge that powers many of our health applications. In the second part of the talk, we will show how the confluence of advances in technology enables us to revolutionize health data collection and perform it at unprecedented scale and granularity. Combined with contextual signals, anonymous aggregated user activity can be used to quantify public health phenomena and provide concerned authorities with actionable information about seasonal or situational health issues. We will conclude the talk with an outline of research directions that could enable people and organizations in personal and public health settings obtain actionable information in a timely manner. The work presented here was the product of collaboration of multiple teams at Google.