Tag Archives: Health

Unlocking the potential of technology to support health

This week kicked off the HLTH Conference in Las Vegas where thousands of healthcare leaders, care providers, patients and other people in the industry — like our teams at Google — are coming together to discuss how to create a healthier world.

At Google, we believe that technology — especially AI and analytics — can unlock a better future for health globally. Our teams from Search, YouTube, Android, Google Cloud and more are using technology to provide health information and insights for consumers, caregivers and communities. Here’s a look at some of our latest updates.

Giving people information and insights to take action on their health

For many, the front door to healthcare is their smartphone. Millions of people turn to Google Search and YouTube for authoritative information or use apps and connected devices, like Fitbit, to help stay on top of health and wellness goals.

To give Android users a new way to get more from their health and wellness data, we introduced Health Connect earlier this year at Google I/O. Through our Early Access Program, more than 10 health, fitness and wellness apps including MyFitnessPal, Oura and Peloton have already integrated with the platform to help people manage everything from workouts to diet to sleep and more. We are now opening up to more developers with Health Connect (Beta) to give people a single place to manage access to data across their health and fitness apps. In the coming months, we will continue to create an even richer ecosystem of apps and features.

Image of app icons

We’ve also made strides on our other platforms, Search and YouTube. In 2021, health videos on YouTube were viewed more than 12 billion times in the U.S. YouTube’s authoritative health content and features are now available in 7 countries, and YouTube recently opened up its features to a wider group of health experts in the U.S. to encompass authoritative services that extend beyond educational institutions and health organizations.

On Search, there’s more ways for people to turn health information into action. After piloting a feature earlier this year that shows available healthcare appointments for primary care, we’re continuing to explore new ways to expand appointments to other specialities and verticals through new and existing partnerships.

This work is made possible by all our partners who provide the health information, insights and experiences that empower consumers in their health.

Equipping healthcare ecosystem with analytics and AI to improve health

Healthcare is one of the largest and most complex industries that is turning towards technology to help organizations run more effectively — which in turn helps people live healthier lives.

When organizations commit to digital transformation, it can be a long and overwhelming process, but that doesn’t mean it has to take years to see benefits for developers, clinicians and patients.

Google Cloud came together with several of our customers and partners — including Hackensack Meridian Health, Lifepoint Health and Mayo Clinic — to find a way to encourage rapid reinvention. As a result, we built Google Cloud’s new Healthcare Data Engine (HDE) accelerators to help organizations reinvent quickly and enable the data interoperability that saves lives. The first three HDE accelerators, available in early 2023, will address common use cases around health equity, patient flow, and value-based care.

The transformation of healthcare requires an open and collaborative approach to be successful. For example, Electronic Health Records (EHR) are a critical part of this ecosystem and we see many ways to work with EHR companies for the benefit of healthcare organizations. Today marks a critical development in this journey. At HLTH we announced an agreement that will allow healthcare organizations to run Epic — an EHR system — on Google Cloud. Hackensack Meridian Health plans to move its Epic workloads to Google Cloud, with the aim to drive greater innovation, efficiencies and security.

And with our solution Care Studio, we’ve been working with MEDITECH to bring our advanced search, summarization and sense-making capabilities to their EHR, MEDITECH Expanse. We are now extending this integrated solution to our first two partners, Mile Bluff Medical Center and DCH Health System, to give their health teams a more complete view of their patients and easily find salient information to provide better care. This includes organizing patient records from different sources into a longitudinal view, bringing our advanced search functionality to clinicians directly in their EHR so they can easily and quickly access critical information all in one place.

Video of Google Health and MEDITECH Expanse integrated solution
10:25

Fitbit Health Solutions is bringing our technology to healthcare partners, incorporating Fitbit devices, services and insights into programs focused on managing chronic conditions like diabetes. A study from the All of Us research program found that increasing your daily step count by 1000 steps could cut the risk of type 2 diabetes by more than 25%. This kind of insight is key to promoting lifestyle changes for people, and why we are partnering with Babylon Health to support their high-risk members managing chronic conditions.

Underpinning all our work is a deep commitment to make sure that we do not leave anyone behind. Technology has the power to eliminate health disparities and democratize access to healthcare. But we need to be intentional in our efforts to live up to our goal of improving the health of billions of people by building for everyone, everywhere.

Saving water in L.A., one leaky toilet at a time

In water-scarce regions like California, every last drop counts. Yet millions of gallons of water are lost every year to a common, yet easily preventable, cause of water waste: leaky toilets.

That's why we recently co-funded a pilot project to install water-saving technology in three multi-family buildings in Los Angeles. The tech takes aim at common leaks, like toilets that keep running water when not in use, which can add up over time. The pilot is on track to save 6.4 million gallons of water a year in the L.A. watershed where we operate, supporting our commitment to replenish 120% of the water we consume, on average, across our offices and data centers by 2030.

The pilot came together with partners from the California Water Action Collaborative (CWAC), a water stewardship network of over 25 organizations — including private companies like Google alongside environmental NGOs and nonprofits — that are committed to improving water security across the state.

Here's a look at how this project is saving water, money and energy, and at the potential for collective action models to make meaningful progress on rising water challenges.

Saving water, money and energy

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power estimates that the average household loses up to 10,000 gallons of water every year to leaky toilets that go unnoticed. The good news is that while leaky toilets can be hard to detect, they’re easy to fix.

For the pilot project, CWAC members Pacific Institute and Bonneville Environmental Foundation tackled this challenge in three low-income multi-family housing buildings operated by nonprofit organizations, working alongside the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and other local water utilities. Toilets in these buildings were equipped with small, low-cost, low-power sensors developed by Sensor Industries. When a toilet leaks, the sensors alert building management in real time that a toilet needs to be repaired. The fix is usually as simple as readjusting or replacing the toilet flapper.

This simple intervention resulted in serious savings of water, money and energy, according to estimates from the nonprofit Pacific Institute:

  • Water: The pilots are reducing building water use by an estimated 15% to 25%. The expected savings of 6.4 million gallons of water per year is equivalent to the total annual water use of about 40 single-family homes. Those savings extend to other customers who get their water from the same public utility, reducing water demand — and improving water reliability and affordability — across the system.
  • Cost: The water savings translate into cost savings on water and wastewater bills of the same 15% to 25%, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a year. The nonprofit building operators who pay the water bills could use these savings to make building improvements, in effect passing the savings along to residents.
  • Energy: Southern California imports much of its water from hundreds of miles away, and it takes a lot of energy to pump this water over the mountains surrounding the L.A. Basin and treat it for household use. By reducing the demand for that water, the project cuts back on the energy and associated greenhouse gas emissions embedded in the water system.

Pacific Institute points to several other advantages of this approach. Residents don’t have to do anything — the non-invasive system detects problems and notifies the building. Facility managers can see the likely reason for the leak (such as a stuck flapper), which helps them fix it faster. The nonprofit building operators can focus on more urgent issues and reduce time spent tracking down leaks.

Bringing the solution to more cities

Taking this pilot to other places has always been a goal, and that expansion effort is now underway. We’re funding work to bring this solution to a 225-unit building in San Francisco that shares a watershed with our local offices. Here we expect to save a little over 1 million gallons of water a year, based on the savings found in L.A.

In New York City, we’re exploring this approach in a building a few miles from our main local campus, and here too we expect to save roughly 1 million gallons of water a year. While this region is not currently in a drought, we expect the system to save significant amounts of energy, as New York City imports its water from far away. Additionally, this project can help reduce pressure on New York’s combined waste- and stormwater system, which can overflow into clean waterways during heavy storms.

In the face of difficult decisions around water resources and scarcity, it’s not easy to find meaningful wins that everyone can get behind. The pilots represent a solution that local utilities anywhere can adopt with the right partners.

Looking ahead, we’ll continue to support collective action around watershed health in the communities where we operate. A healthy, resilient water system takes all of us.

Related Article

Our commitment to water stewardship

We’re committing to replenish 120% of the water we consume, on average, by 2030 and supporting water security in areas where we operate.

Read Article

Saving water in L.A., one leaky toilet at a time

In water-scarce regions like California, every last drop counts. Yet millions of gallons of water are lost every year to a common, yet easily preventable, cause of water waste: leaky toilets.

That's why we recently co-funded a pilot project to install water-saving technology in three multi-family buildings in Los Angeles. The tech takes aim at common leaks, like toilets that keep running water when not in use, which can add up over time. The pilot is on track to save 6.4 million gallons of water a year in the L.A. watershed where we operate, supporting our commitment to replenish 120% of the water we consume, on average, across our offices and data centers by 2030.

The pilot came together with partners from the California Water Action Collaborative (CWAC), a water stewardship network of over 25 organizations — including private companies like Google alongside environmental NGOs and nonprofits — that are committed to improving water security across the state.

Here's a look at how this project is saving water, money and energy, and at the potential for collective action models to make meaningful progress on rising water challenges.

Saving water, money and energy

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power estimates that the average household loses up to 10,000 gallons of water every year to leaky toilets that go unnoticed. The good news is that while leaky toilets can be hard to detect, they’re easy to fix.

For the pilot project, CWAC members Pacific Institute and Bonneville Environmental Foundation tackled this challenge in three low-income multi-family housing buildings operated by nonprofit organizations, working alongside the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and other local water utilities. Toilets in these buildings were equipped with small, low-cost, low-power sensors developed by Sensor Industries. When a toilet leaks, the sensors alert building management in real time that a toilet needs to be repaired. The fix is usually as simple as readjusting or replacing the toilet flapper.

This simple intervention resulted in serious savings of water, money and energy, according to estimates from the nonprofit Pacific Institute:

  • Water: The pilots are reducing building water use by an estimated 15% to 25%. The expected savings of 6.4 million gallons of water per year is equivalent to the total annual water use of about 40 single-family homes. Those savings extend to other customers who get their water from the same public utility, reducing water demand — and improving water reliability and affordability — across the system.
  • Cost: The water savings translate into cost savings on water and wastewater bills of the same 15% to 25%, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a year. The nonprofit building operators who pay the water bills could use these savings to make building improvements, in effect passing the savings along to residents.
  • Energy: Southern California imports much of its water from hundreds of miles away, and it takes a lot of energy to pump this water over the mountains surrounding the L.A. Basin and treat it for household use. By reducing the demand for that water, the project cuts back on the energy and associated greenhouse gas emissions embedded in the water system.

Pacific Institute points to several other advantages of this approach. Residents don’t have to do anything — the non-invasive system detects problems and notifies the building. Facility managers can see the likely reason for the leak (such as a stuck flapper), which helps them fix it faster. The nonprofit building operators can focus on more urgent issues and reduce time spent tracking down leaks.

Bringing the solution to more cities

Taking this pilot to other places has always been a goal, and that expansion effort is now underway. We’re funding work to bring this solution to a 225-unit building in San Francisco that shares a watershed with our local offices. Here we expect to save a little over 1 million gallons of water a year, based on the savings found in L.A.

In New York City, we’re exploring this approach in a building a few miles from our main local campus, and here too we expect to save roughly 1 million gallons of water a year. While this region is not currently in a drought, we expect the system to save significant amounts of energy, as New York City imports its water from far away. Additionally, this project can help reduce pressure on New York’s combined waste- and stormwater system, which can overflow into clean waterways during heavy storms.

In the face of difficult decisions around water resources and scarcity, it’s not easy to find meaningful wins that everyone can get behind. The pilots represent a solution that local utilities anywhere can adopt with the right partners.

Looking ahead, we’ll continue to support collective action around watershed health in the communities where we operate. A healthy, resilient water system takes all of us.

Related Article

Our commitment to water stewardship

We’re committing to replenish 120% of the water we consume, on average, by 2030 and supporting water security in areas where we operate.

Read Article

Democratizing access to health

Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared in The Global Governance Project's magazine, as part of Google's wider participation in the World Health Summit. Dr. Garth Graham, the global head of YouTube Health, also contributed a piece on the role of information as a determinant of health.

The COVID-19 pandemic energized public-private partnerships and strengthened the role of technology towards democratizing access to health to help billions of people everywhere live healthier lives — but fresh challenges are emerging from its shadow

COVID-19 has been a generation-defining challenge filled with incalculable human costs and long-term impacts that remain unclear. Like many, I have been reflecting on how the pandemic will shape medicine and public health in particular for generations to come.

The pandemic severely tested public health. Many places around the world could not keep pace with the demands of disease surveillance and continue to see challenges with vaccination rates. Still, public health rose to the occasion. Public health officials quickly interpreted evolving science to provide guidance that kept individuals and communities safe. There were also live-saving scientific advancements — from realizing the promise of mRNA vaccines and adaptive clinical trials to using real-world clinical data to inform regulatory processes.

Underlying some incredible gains were public-private partnerships — particularly between the technology and health sectors — which I believe will continue to flourish. These partnerships have made the wider dissemination of public health messages, better data and surveillance systems, and faster interventions possible.

For our part at Google, we adapted to accommodate this hopefully once-in-a-lifetime event by launching more than 200 new products, features and initiatives, in addition to providing in-kind donations totaling more than $1 billion.

Surfacing quality information is part of our core mission. During the first weeks of the pandemic, we recognized the opportunity to provide the right information, at the right time through the reach of platforms such as Search and YouTube that amplified health messages to billions of people, encouraging them to “flatten the curve” through non-pharmacologic interventions. We donated Google Search Advertising and offered assistance to organizations, such as the World Health Organization, to provide more than two billion COVID-related public service announcements that connected nearly 100 million people to high-quality information.

Issues masked by the pandemic

Today, as we conceive of a time when COVID-19 is endemic, we must turn our attention in earnest to other global challenges that the pandemic masked or even exacerbated. For our part, we will continue to use our products, technologies and expertise to help people, their caregivers and their communities, focusing on areas that align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as mental health and maternal health.

During the first year of the pandemic, anxiety and depression increased by 25% across the globe.[aea966]Searches for “mental health therapist” and “mental health help” reached record highs in the U.S. in 2022.[3def86]To make it easier to access mental health services and resources — such as clinically validated mental health self-assessments and crisis hotlines — we are enhancing information resources on Search and YouTube, partnering with organizations including the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the US, the Samaritans in the UK and iCall in India.

The pandemic also made it clear that existing healthcare gaps need to be filled so people can access the best care no matter where they are. At least half of the global population lacks essential health services[31a300], such as immunizations and pediatric care. Technology can help fill these capacity gaps — especially artificial intelligence. Already, AI has demonstrated promise not just as a tool to support significant gains in health care, but also as a means to eliminate disparities and improve health for everyone, everywhere. We are invested in the research and development of these technologies, and doing so inclusively and ethically.

For example, the global maternal mortality rate remains high, with an average of 152 deaths per 100,000 live births.[b27223]The vast majority of deaths occur in low- and lower-middle income countries. We are partnering with Northwestern Medicine to expand access to fetal ultrasound, validating the use of AI to create more automated and accurate evaluations of maternal and fetal health risks. The goal is to train providers and community health workers to conduct ultrasounds and assessments in the field.

Another area where AI can be helpful is cancer screening. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer with 2.26 million new cases occurring each year, yet early screening and detection can improve long-term outcomes.[3e6ff6]We have been researching how AI can reduce the time to diagnosis and improve the patient experience.

The full picture

As we support health service providers across the globe, we are uncovering ways to make sure they have the information they need to care for patients. Today, healthcare workers use smartphone applications to manage data specific to certain diseases, for example malaria and tuberculosis. But that data is often stored across multiple applications and formats, making it hard to have a full picture of a patient’s needs. To provide access to advanced mobile digital health solutions, we are working with the WHO to build an open-source software development kit, or SDK.

We see these innovations as important steps on the road to democratizing health care. There are more on the horizon, fueled by AI and cloud computing, that can bring more meaning to the data and unlock innovation. A great example of this can be found in emerging efforts at the intersection of public health and climate change where we are beginning to see patterns and associations among climate, weather and health.

Technology is just one tool to solve these public health challenges and its effectiveness depends on robust public-private partnerships. When we look back at the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the related health crises it brought awareness to, I believe that we will recognize it as a moment that energized our ability to collaborate. And that spirit of collaboration and partnerships will transform public health and democratize its benefits for everyone, everywhere.

A new genome sequencing tool powered with our technology

Genome sequencing provides a more complete description of cells and organisms, allowing scientists to uncover serious genetic conditions such as the elevated risk for breast cancer or pulmonary arterial hypertension. While researching genomics has the potential to save lives and preserve people’s quality of life, it's incredibly challenging work.

Back in January, we announced a partnership with PacBio, a developer of genome sequencing instruments, to further advance genomic technologies. Today, PacBio is introducing the Revio sequencing system, an instrument that runs on our deep learning technology, DeepConsensus. With DeepConsensus built right into Revio, researchers can quickly and accurately identify genetic variants that cause diseases.

How Google Health’s technology works

Genome sequencing requires observing individual DNA molecules amidst a complex and noisy background. To address the problem, Google Health worked to adapt Transformer, one of our most influential existing deep learning methods that was developed in 2017 primarily to understand languages. We then applied it to PacBio’s data, which uses fluorescence light to encode DNA sequences. The result was DeepConsensus.

Last year, we demonstrated that DeepConsensus was capable of reducing sequencing errors by 42%, resulting in better genome assemblies and more accurate identification of genetic variants. Although this was a promising research demonstration, we knew that DeepConsensus could have the greatest impact if it was running directly on PacBio’s sequencing instrument. Over the last year, we’ve worked closely with PacBio to speed up DeepConsensus by over 500x from its initial release. We’ve also further improved its accuracy to reduce errors by 59%.

Combining our AI methods and genomics work with PacBio’s instruments and expertise, we were able to build better methods for the research community. Our partnership with PacBio doesn’t stop with Revio. There’s limitless potential to make an impact on the research community and improve healthcare and access for people around the world.

How we’re restoring native habitats in Silicon Valley

Vast oak woodlands punctuated with lush willow groves once stretched from Palo Alto to San Jose and beyond, long before the rise of Silicon Valley.

“Centuries of agricultural intensification and urbanization have transformed these landscapes,” says Erin Beller, Google’s ecology program lead who studied Silicon Valley’s ecological history and restoration potential for her PhD. “We’ve lost over 99% of these valuable native habitats.”

Now, Google’s real estate and ecology teams are working to bring nature back into the built environment — in part, by restoring critical habitats like oak woodlands and willow groves across our Bay Area campuses. The goal is to revive the area’s ecological heritage and bolster the human experience while creating thriving, functional landscapes for a biodiverse constellation of species.

Already, the team has restored over 15 acres on Google’s campuses and in the surrounding urban landscape, in partnership with local NGOs, ecology experts and government agencies. This work includes everything from creating welcoming habitat patches for pollinators like native bees and monarch butterflies to partnering on larger projects like restoring the Charleston Retention Basin.

  • An orange and black monarch butterfly rests on milkweed.

    A monarch butterfly on narrow-leaf milkweed on Google’s Sunnyvale campus. We’ve committed $1 million to help California’s monarch butterfly conservation efforts, adding more habitat on our campuses and supporting the creation of 600 acres of habitat across the state.

  • A white great egret bird stands in its nest at the Shorebird Way rookery.

    A great egret standing in its nest at the Shorebird Way rookery, the largest in the South Bay area. Google protects the rookery by closing the road to vehicles during nesting season each year. Hundreds of snowy egrets, great egrets and black-crowned night herons return annually to nest and raise their young.

  • Two people wearing backpacks and baseball caps walk along a path between native plants.

    Two members of the ecology team walk along a path between native plants in the South Bay campus. Google’s real estate and ecology teams are working to bring nature back into the built environment.

Together these efforts drive landscape-scale restoration of historical ecosystems like oak woodlands, willow groves, meadows and grasslands, and creek and wetland habitats. Oaks and willows are especially important to Beller’s team because they play a defining role in sustaining ecosystems. Both support a dizzying array of wildlife and have great potential to adapt to California’s changing climate. “Oaks and willows have superpowers,” says Beller.

Oak canopies: host to a community of creatures

Iconic trees of the California landscape, oaks once dominated Silicon Valley. Oaks are drought-tolerant, fire-resistant, and efficient at removing air pollution and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.

Oak woodland ecosystems sustain some of the highest plant and animal diversity in California, supporting 2,000 additional plant species and around 5,000 insect species. Hundreds more birds, mammals and other wildlife rely on the richness of oak woodlands for food, shade and shelter.

  • A brown juvenile bushtit bird rests on a tree branch.

    A juvenile bushtit pictured at the Charleston Retention Basin. Insectivorous birds, like the bushtit and oak titmouse, feed on insects they find in oaks. These smaller birds are prey for predators like raptors and northern pygmy owls.

  • A Western bluebird looks left while sitting in front of oak tree leaves.

    A Western bluebird perched beside an oak tree at Google’s Bay View campus.

  • A round yellow wasp gall grows on the branches of an oak tree.

    A cynipid wasp gall on an oak by the Charleston Retention Basin. More than 130 species of cynipid wasps depend on Silicon Valley’s oaks to build their galls. Galls are an overgrowth of plant tissue produced in response to chemicals secreted by wasp larvae. Most wasp galls cause little or no lasting damage to oaks, and the insects that cause them help form complex food webs that are partially responsible for the amazing biodiversity found in oak habitats.

  • Three ecology team members in neon orange vests study trees in front of a building.

    Young oaks and native understory planting at Charleston East. In the next decade, Google estimates that the diverse network of oak species at Charleston East will provide 80,000 square feet of connected tree canopy.

  • A gray squirrel sits at the base of an oak tree, looking right.

    Oak leaves and acorns are consumed by herbivores like red and eastern gray squirrels (pictured) and birds like the California scrub jay, which consumes and disperses acorns, helping the trees to propagate.

Oaks can bring powerful benefits to urban areas, like creating wildlife corridors and mitigating the urban heat island effect. Already, Google has planted hundreds of oak trees across our Mountain View and Sunnyvale campuses, with plans to plant hundreds more. These efforts follow guidelines for tree density and spacing laid out in "Re-Oaking Silicon Valley," a study Beller co-authored with her extended team that also serves as a resource for other businesses and organizations.

Wetland willows: a stop for migratory birds

Whereas oaks thrive on well-drained valley soils, willows flourish in low-lying areas where groundwater is close to the surface. Because willows tap this groundwater, they stay lush and green well into the dry season, reducing the need for irrigation.

Like oaks, willows sequester carbon once mature. They’re also critical for insect biodiversity and can provide high-quality food for insectivorous birds and other wildlife. Silicon Valley has lost nearly all of its willow groves, which once served as essential stopovers for migratory birds heading south.

  • A water basin reflects the sun in front of two low round buildings at the Bay View campus.

    The Google Bay View campus incorporates stormwater retention basins designed to support willows, so the trees can provide habitat for migratory bird species and longer-term residents like pollinators, lizards, songbirds and other small animals. (Iwan Baan for Google)

  • A willow flycatcher bird rests on a tree branch, looking right.

    Songbirds like willow flycatchers (pictured) and Wilson’s warblers rest and refuel among the valley’s willows. They spend several days gorging on huge quantities of insects before continuing on their long journey to Central America.

  • Two field researchers write in notebooks while sitting in a fenced-in area surrounded by greenery and trees.

    Google’s field researchers in the shade of a willow grove at the Charleston Retention Basin, a partnership between Google, the City of Mountain View, HCP Life Science and LinkedIn. Google removed more than 100 parking spaces to help create more extensive willow floodplains, cottonwood groves and other habitats here.

Thanks to Google’s willow grove restoration initiatives like those around the Charleston Retention Basin and on our Bayview and Charleston East campuses, there are more places for migratory songbirds to rest and find food to replenish their energy en route.

At the Charleston Retention Basin — home to one of the largest willow groves in the region — there are new trails, seats and lookout points so people can immerse themselves in the outdoors and appreciate the biodiversity around them.

Bringing nature back beyond the Bay

In addition to projects in the Bay Area, Google’s ecology team has urban greening projects in the works across several of our campuses, including in the heart of London, Munich and New York.

“Nature and people should be able to flourish together in the campuses and communities that Google calls home,” says Beller.

This work is part of a bigger global movement. The idea that nature in cities is crucial for both people and wildlife is taking root, and high-profile projects like London’s National Park City to The High Line of New York have brought it into the public consciousness.

“We know that access to nature has profound benefits for human health and wellbeing,” says Kate Turpin, director of design performance for Google’s real estate development team. “It can be a place of refuge, from a hot day or the busy pace of working life.”

A researcher wearing a blue shirt and green baseball cap holds a wooden measuring stick next to milkweed plants.

A field researcher measures the height of native narrow-leaf milkweed on the Google campus, as part of biodiversity monitoring efforts.

To help scale their ideas, Beller’s team supports open-source scientific research, from local guidelines for native planting in Silicon Valley for institutions and residents to academic research about the value of urban nature. “From backyards to businesses, we hope everyone will pitch in to bring nature back into cities,” says Beller. They have also partnered with local scientists to monitor these new habitats on campus, using data to measure the impact of native landscaping on bird and insect biodiversity and inform future campus restoration efforts.

The early signs in the Bay Area are promising. “I can step out of the office and lose myself among the willow groves around the Charleston Retention Basin — enjoy a walk in the shade, spot birds and butterflies, and hear the hum of a functioning ecosystem all around me,” says Beller. “I’ve spent a large part of my career as an ecologist reflecting on what was. It’s awe-inspiring to think about what could be.”

Read Article

Doing our part for California’s monarch butterflies

We’re taking steps to help address the threat facing California’s monarch butterflies by providing grants and habitat on our campuses.

Read Article

7 ways to help make better sense of your health information

When I’m sick or someone I care about is sick, one of the first things I do — even as a doctor myself — is seek out more information, whether it’s searching for answers to questions online, making an appointment with a doctor or connecting with others in similar situations. At Google, we’re committed to connecting people in those moments to reliable, easy-to-understand information so they can make more informed health decisions for themselves and others.

For Health Literacy Month in the U.S., here are 7 ways our products and services can help you better find and understand health information.

  1. Quickly access easy-to-understand health information.

Many of us come to the internet first to look for information about different health conditions and symptoms. When you’re looking for this information on Google Search, you’ll find helpful information panels. These information panels are available in a number of countries and provide details on dozens of conditions — from the common cold to headaches and more.

2. Learn more about your source.

When you’re searching for a topic or condition you’re unfamiliar with, you can use Search tools to learn more about the information you see online. Through the About this result tool — accessed by clicking on the three dots next to most results on Search — you can find information like, descriptions of the source, and what others on the web say about a source or topic. With this added context, you can make more informed decisions about the sites you visit and the health information you rely on.

3. Find an appointment with a care provider — and check your in-network options.

Booking a doctor’s appointment can be an overwhelming and complex process because of the different types of appointments available to you. On Google Search, we have updated our experience to make it easier for tens of millions of people who use Search everyday to find local health information. This includes showing appointment availability for some local providers and facilities and giving you search filters and information to help you identify providers who might take your insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid.

Screenshot of Google's appointment availability features

4. Find answers from authoritative health sources.

YouTube has made it easier for people to find reliable information to help answer their health questions. We’ve added health source information panels on videos to help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources, and health content shelves that more effectively highlight videos from these sources when you search for specific health topics. These context cues are aimed at helping people more easily navigate and evaluate authoritative health information.

Screenshots of YouTube's health source information labels

5. Connect with a community that understands your health journey.

If you’re looking for support, empathy or shared experiences related to certain health conditions, YouTube’s new Personal Stories feature makes it easier to connect with others who have similar experiences. This feature elevates stories from those who are sharing their lived experiences relevant to common health conditions like anxiety, depression and cancer.

Screenshot of YouTube Personal Stores feature

6. Understand your health and wellness health information.

Fitbit is designed to give you better and more actionable insights about health and wellness. For example, among its most popular features is Daily Readiness Score that takes multiple inputs — such as sleep patterns, activity levels and heart rate variability — and combines them into one singular number that you can refer to when deciding whether to workout or recover.

Gif of Daily Readiness Score

7. Get to know (and improve) your ZZZs...

Track your sleep habits to understand patterns that might impact your health and wellbeing. With Fitbit, you can track your sleep each night right from the wrist so you can better understand your patterns, track over time, and make changes to improve your sleep. With Fitbit Premium, you can see an even more in-depth analysis of your sleep with the Sleep Profile feature that offers monthly sleep analyses and an associated Sleep Animal that makes your sleep data even easier to interpret. If you use Nest, Sleep Sensing gives you a daily personalized sleep summary along with tailored bedtime schedules and other suggestions that can help you improve your sleep.

  • Sleep Profile landing page
  • Sleep Profile Hedgehog
  • Sleep Profile metrics

We’re committed to connecting people with the tools, voices, and experiences they need to act for themselves and others on their health journey. After all,organizations have an important role to play in helping people understand and use health information.

How AI can help in the fight against breast cancer

In 2020, there were 2.3 million people diagnosed with breast cancer and 685,000 deaths globally. Early cancer detection is key to better health outcomes. But screenings are work intensive, and patients often find getting mammogramsand waiting for results stressful.

In response to these challenges, Google Health and Northwestern Medicine partnered in 2021 on a clinical research study to explore whether artificial intelligence (AI) models can reduce the time to diagnosis during the screening process, narrowing the assessment gap and improving the patient experience. This work is among the first prospective randomized controlled studies for AI in breast cancer screening, and the results will be published in early 2023.

Behind this work, are scientists and researchers united in the fight against breast cancer. We spoke with Dr. Sunny Jansen, a technical program manager at Google, and Sally Friedewald, MD, the division chief of Breast and Women's Imaging at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, on how they hope this work will help screening providers catch cancer earlier and improve the patient experience.

What were you hoping to achieve with this work in the fight against breast cancer?

Dr. Jansen:Like so many of us, I know how breast cancer can impact families and communities, and how critical early detection can be. The experiences of so many around me have influenced my work in this area. I hope that AI can make the future of breast cancer screening easier, faster, more accurate — and, ultimately, more accessible for women globally.

So we sought to understand how AI can reduce diagnostic delays and help patients receive diagnoses as soon as possible by streamlining care into a single visit. For patients with abnormal findings at screening, the diagnostic delay to get additional imaging tests is typically a couple of weeks in the U.S.Often, the results are normal after the additional imaging tests, but that waiting period can be nerve-racking. Additionally, it can be harder for some patients to come back to get additional imaging tests, which exacerbates delays and leads to disparities in the timeliness of care.

Dr. Friedewald:I anticipate an increase in the demand for screenings and challenges in having enough providers with the necessary specialized training. Using AI, we can identify patients who need additional imaging when they are still in the clinic. We can expedite their care, and, in many cases, eliminate the need for return visits. Patients who aren’t flagged still receive the care they need as well. This translates into operational efficiencies and ultimately leads to patients getting a breast cancer diagnosis faster. We already know the earlier treatment starts, the better.

What were your initial beliefs about applying AI to identify breast cancer? How have these changed through your work on this project?

Dr. Jansen: Most existing publications about AI and breast cancer analyze AI performance retrospectively by reviewing historical datasets. While retrospective studies have a lot of value, they don’t necessarily represent how AI works in the real world. Sally decided early on that it would be important to do a prospective study, incorporating AI into real-world clinical workflows and measuring the impact. I wasn’t sure what to expect!

Dr. Friedewald:Computer-aided detection (CAD), which was developed a few decades ago to help radiologists identify cancers via mammogram, has proven to be helpful in some environments. Overall, in the U.S., CAD has not resulted in increased cancer detection. I was concerned that AI would be similar to CAD in efficacy. However, AI gathers data in a fundamentally different way. I am hopeful that with this new information we can identify cancers earlier with the ultimate goal of saving lives.

The research will be published in early 2023. What did you find most inspiring and hopeful about what you learned?

Dr. Jansen:The patients who consented to participate in the study inspired me. Clinicians and scientists must conduct quality real-world research so that the best ideas can be identified and moved forward, and we need patients as equal partners in our research.

Dr. Friedewald:Agreed! There’s an appetite to improve our processes and make screening easier and less anxiety-provoking. I truly believe that if we can streamline care for our patients, we will decrease the stress associated with screening and hopefully improve access for those who need it.

Additionally, AI has the potential to go beyond the prioritization of patients who need care. By prospectively identifying patients who are at higher risk of developing breast cancer, AI could help us determine patients that might need a more rigorous screening regimen. I am looking forward to collaborating with Google on this topic and others that could ultimately improve cancer survival.

Google Assistant offers information and hope for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

It has been nearly 15 years since that otherwise ordinary Thursday afternoon when my mom came home with a diagnosis that would change our lives, irrevocably and forever: Stage II breast cancer. Despite the visceral and all-consuming fear that accompanies a cancer diagnosis, the oncologists reassured us hers was treatable, that she’d be there to dance at our weddings, that she’d live to grow old.

But she died instead.

Her cancer was too aggressive. She ran out of treatment options. Just two years after the word “cancer” cleaved our lives in half, she was gone — destroyed by a disease that could’ve been stopped had we just known sooner.

Unfortunately this experience — this painfully tragic, heartbreaking and circuitous trajectory — is shared by too many people. Every year, approximately 42,000 women in the U.S. die of breast cancer, and one of every eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with the disease over the course of her lifetime. These are women we love fiercely — our moms, sisters, friends, neighbors, daughters and leaders. And like my mom, for most of them — nearly 85% — this diagnosis comes with no family history whatsoever.

While we can’t stop the incidence of breast cancer, we know one thing is true: Early detection saves lives. Women who catch their cancers early — through regular screenings, checkups and mammograms — have a much higher chance of surviving. Of responding to treatments. Of living to meet their grandchildren.

That’s why, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we’re sharing updates around how Google is helping. On top of our work building AI models that can improve the detection of breast cancer in screenings, we’re raising awareness about the importance of these checkups. For instance, we’re building features into products like Google Assistant to help people take early steps to protect themselves against breast cancer.

Breast cancer facts and resources on Assistant

Since more than 700 million people turn to Google Assistant every month as their go-to helper, it’s a great way to reach them in their everyday moments.

If you’re prone to putting off your checkups, just tell your Assistant, “Hey Google, set an annual reminder to get my breast exam on [date].” And if you say, “Hey Google, tell me about Breast Cancer Awareness Month” or “Give me a Breast Cancer Awareness fact” in the U.S., you’ll receive facts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the critical importance of early detection and mammography in improving prognoses and saving lives. From here on out, you can always turn to Assistant as a fast and reliable source of this information, not just during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

A graphic shows someone asking Google Assistant for a Breast Cancer Awareness fact, followed by a response referencing the CDC’s guidance to lower one’s risk of breast cancer.

To reach even more people, during the month of October we’re also sharing more information about breast cancer in response to some of the most common questions people ask their Assistant every day — including “What’s up?” and “How are you?” Give it a try today in the U.S. on your home or mobile device.

Like so many, I’ve learned firsthand that our lives can change in a single, ordinary moment — with the discovery of a tumor you pray is benign, a diagnosis for which you hope there is a cure, the fear that the person you love may not celebrate another birthday or live to become a grandmother. While breast cancer took my mom's life far too soon, I can think of no greater gift to share in her memory than the reminder for other women to detect and treat their diseases early. Before they’re too aggressive to cure. Before they can circumvent even the strongest treatments. Before it’s too late.

For the millions who use Google Assistant, we want to make this information as easy to find as a simple, “Hey Google, how are you?” And by doing that, provide something just as meaningful: a place to start, and a glimmer of hope.

How we’re using machine learning to understand proteins

When most people think of proteins, their mind typically goes to protein-rich foods such as steak or tofu. But proteins are so much more. They’re essential to how living things operate and thrive, and studying them can help improve lives. For example, insulin treatments are life-changing for people with diabetes that are based on years of studying proteins.

There is a world of information yet to discover when it comes to proteins — from helping people get the healthcare they need to finding ways to protect plant species. Teams at Google are focused on studying proteins so we can realize Google Health’s mission to help billions of people live healthier lives.

Back in March, we published apost about a model we developed at Google that predicts protein function and a tool that allows scientists to use this model. Since then, the protein function team has accomplished more work in this space. We chatted with software engineer Max Bileschi to find out more about studying proteins and the work Google is doing.

Can you give us a quick crash course in proteins?

Proteins dictate so much of what happens in and around us, like how we and other organisms function.

Two things determine what a protein does: its chemical formula and its environment. For example, we know that human hemoglobin, a protein inside your blood, carries oxygen to your organs. We also know that if there are particular tiny changes to the chemical formula of hemoglobin in your body, it can trigger sickle cell anemia. Further, we know that blood behaves differently at different temperatures because proteins behave differently at higher temperatures.

So why did a team at Google start studying proteins?

We have the opportunity to look at how machine learning can help various scientific fields. Proteins are an obvious choice because of the amazing breadth of functions they have in our bodies and in the world. There is an enormous amount of public data, and while individual researchers have done excellent work studying specific proteins, we know that we’ve just scratched the surface of fully understanding the protein universe. It’s highly aligned to Google’s mission of organizing information and making it accessible and useful.

This sounds exciting! Tell us more about the use of machine learning in identifying what proteins do and how it improves upon the status quo.

Only around 1% of proteins have been studied in a laboratory setting. We want to see how machine learning can help us learn about the other 99%.

It’s difficult work. There are at least a billion proteins in the world, and they’ve evolved throughout history and have been shaped by the same forces of natural selection we normally think of as acting on DNA. It’s useful to understand this evolutionary relatedness among proteins. The presence of a similar protein in two or more distantly related organisms (say humans and zebrafish) can be indicative that it’s useful for survival. Proteins that are closely related can have similar functions but with small differences, like encouraging the same chemical reaction but doing so at different temperatures. Sometimes it’s easy to determine that two proteins are closely related, but other times it's difficult. This was the first problem in protein function annotation that we tackled with machine learning.

Machine learning helps best when it truly helps, not replaces, current techniques. For example, we demonstrated that about 300 previously-uncharacterized proteins are related to “phage capsid” proteins. These capsid proteins can help us deliver medicines to the cells that really need them. We worked with a trusted protein database, Pfam, to confirm our hypothesis, and now these proteins are listed as being related to phage capsid proteins — for all the public to see — including researchers.

Back up a bit. Can you explain what the protein family database Pfam is? How has your team contributed to this database?

A community of scientists built a number of tools and databases, over decades, to help classify what each different protein does. Pfam is one of the most-used databases, and it classifies proteins into about 20,000 types of proteins.

This work of classifying proteins requires both computer models and experts (called curators) to validate and improve the computer models.

Graph showing how the Pfam region coverage over time, depicting that machine learning helped grow the database and add several years of progress.

We used machine learning to add classifications for human proteins that previously lacked Pfam classifications — helping grow the database and adding several years of progress.

Since the publication of your paper ‘Using deep learning to annotate the protein universe’ in June, what has your team been up to?

We’re focused on identifying more proteins and sharing that knowledge with the science and research community. At the end of July, we released more data jointly with Pfam. And this month we’re making Pfam data and Mgnify data, another database that catalogs microbiome data, available on Google Cloud Platform so more people can have access to it. Later this year, we’ll launch an initiative with UniProt, a prominent database in our field, to use language models to name uncharacterized proteins in UniProt. We’re excited about the progress we’re making and how sharing this data can help solve challenging problems.