Google embraces health care's AI agentic era
Google is betting big on bots. The company is working on several initiatives that give doctors and researchers access to AI agents built on large language models that can review scientific journals more quickly than humans and advise on research proposals, patient diagnoses and treatment options. This use of bots as agents is referred to as agentic AI.
Developing new therapies: The newest of the bots is TxGemma, a collection of language models aimed at helping pharmaceutical companies with drug discovery. Google announced the initiative Tuesday at its annual Check-Up event in New York City.
TxGemma is based on Google's Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot, a general-purpose large language model. Jöelle Barral, senior director of research and engineering at Google Deepmind, the company's artificial intelligence laboratory, said that developers can use TxGemma to build products that can answer questions about a gene's relationship to disease, a drug's potential for toxicity, and whether a drug would likely clear a clinical trial.
Researchers can also ask Gemma-bots to explain their reasoning and how they arrived at specific answers — opening up the algorithm's black box.
Acquiring patient data previsit: The company's other bets are more focused on patient care. Google has deployed its Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston as part of a prospective study to explore how well AMIE can collect information from patients before their visit and what role it can best play in patient care.
Google also has a 'co-scientist' — a Gemini-based chatbot to help researchers review scientific literature, reach a hypothesis and even compose potential research proposals.
Customizing tools for doctors and patients: Google is helping doctors design tools for their own purposes. At the Netherlands' Princess Maxima Center, doctors built a bot called Capricorn, using Gemini, that helps them pick personalized cancer treatments for kids. One doctor from Princess Maxima said the task once took him two to three days to complete, but 'now it takes 40 seconds.'
Meanwhile, the American Cancer Society is using Gemini as the basis for a bot called Ana that's designed to answer basic questions patients have about their cancer diagnosis, their treatments and where to find social support resources.
Why it matters: AI is moving fast in health care, and Google seems eager to develop a go-to assistant for doctors, researchers and, now, drug developers.
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FORWARD THINKING
For years, Congress has extended pandemic-era telehealth rules without making them permanent.
Lawmakers opted for another short-term solution earlier this month, extending the pandemic policies through September.
But some health providers and remote care-related businesses are tired of the short-term stopgaps.
Jiang Li, CEO of remote patient-monitoring company Vivalink, said in a statement that 'progress will stall' without a long-term policy strategy that would allow providers to invest in new methods to offer care.
The chance the pandemic rules could change or lapse in a fight over government funding could discourage further investment.
Even so: Concerns about stalled progress from Congress' last-minute, short-term fixes have been shared on the Hill before — and remote care has continued to boom.
Why it matters: The rise of telehealth, hospital-at-home programs and other remote care services represents significant transformation in how patients experience health care today.
How policymakers handle remote care could determine access to — and the cost of — care in the coming decades.
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