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.
2. Medical Records APIs in Health Connect
Managing your health can be hard when information is spread across different apps. To help, we’ve launched our new Medical Records APIs globally in Health Connect. These APIs enable apps to read and write medical record information like allergies, medications, immunizations and lab results in standard FHIR format. 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.
On Health Connect, your data is stored locally on your device, and you’re in full control of which apps have access to your data and what kind of data is shared with them.
3. Loss of Pulse Detection
Last month, we received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for our Loss of Pulse Detection feature on Pixel Watch 3. This first-of-its-kind feature can detect when you’ve experienced a loss of pulse (your heart stops beating from an event like primary cardiac arrest, respiratory or circulatory failure, overdose or poisoning) and automatically prompt a call to emergency services for potentially life-saving care if you’re unresponsive.
First announced in 2024 with EU availability, this feature is currently available in 14 countries and we’ll begin rolling it out in the U.S. at the end of March.
4. AI co-scientist
Research is at the heart of our work, whether that’s incremental updates that build on years of progress, or groundbreaking developments that change the industry and how our partners work. To help biomedical researchers create novel hypotheses and research plans, we recently launched an AI co-scientist, a new system built on Gemini 2.0. The AI co-scientist helps researchers parse large volumes of scientific literature and generate high-quality, novel hypotheses. For instance, let’s say researchers want to better understand the spread of a disease-causing microbe. They can specify this research goal using natural language, and the AI co-scientist will propose testable hypotheses, including a summary of relevant published literature and a possible experimental approach.
Though not meant to automate the scientific process, this collaborative tool is designed to help experts uncover new ideas and accelerate their work. We’re already working with partners, including Imperial College London, Houston Methodist and Stanford University, and are keen to see how researchers around the world use this tool. And while it’s in its early days, the enthusiasm is clear — we’ve received considerable interest for our upcoming trusted tester program.
5. TxGemma
The development of therapeutic drugs from concept to approved use is a long and expensive process, so we’re working with the wider research community to find new ways to make this development more efficient.
Today, we announced TxGemma, a collection of Gemma-based open models that we hope will help improve the efficiency of AI-powered drug discovery. TxGemma is able to understand regular text and the structures of different therapeutic entities, like small molecules, chemicals and proteins. This means researchers can ask TxGemma questions to help predict important properties of potential new therapies, like how safe or effective they might be.
Later this month, we’ll be making this available to the community to build on and improve through Health AI Developer Foundations.
6. Treatment options for pediatric oncology
With the help of Google, the Princess Máxima Center for pediatric oncology in the Netherlands is developing an AI tool called Capricorn. It uses Gemini models to help physicians accelerate the identification of personalized cancer treatments by combining vast public medical data and de-identified patient data.
Based on its analysis, Capricorn rapidly generates summaries of treatment options and relevant medical publication, which allows physicians to have more in-depth discussions on how to achieve the best possible health outcomes for their pediatric patients. With AI, physicians have more time to dedicate to what’s most important: patient care.
Taken together, these updates show the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe, with more to come.
