Google is changing its healthcare strategy and dismantling its health division, according to an Insider report. 

In an internal memo obtained by Insider, the initiatives once housed in the division will now be under more general umbrellas. For example, Google’s AI healthcare team will now report to the president of search and AI, and Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Google’s CMO, as well as the division’s clinician team, will now report to the chief legal officer. 

This comes just months after reports circulated that the tech giant was reorganizing its consumer health team and moving 130 of its roughly 700 Google Health employees to the Search and Fitbit group.

There were signs last week when Google Health Vice President Dr. David Feinberg announced he was stepping down in order to serve as CEO at EHR company Cerner. 

WHY IT MATTERS 

All eyes have been on big tech and large retail companies when it comes to disrupting the healthcare industry. This reorganization puts health efforts throughout the company instead of in one concentrated area. A Google spokesperson reiterated to Insider that Google has put substantial investments into health “across the company.” This movement could be indicative that health will be a mission throughout the organization. 

It isn’t the first shake-up for Google’s health efforts. In fact, in 2011 the company announced that it would shut down its personal health record platform that was also named Google Health due to scaling issues. The company also shuttered its fitness tracking app called My Tracks in 2016. 

THE LARGER TREND 

It’s no secret that the Silicon Valley giant is interested in health. Google made headlines in the health industry in 2019 when it announced its plans to acquire wearable giant Fitbit for roughly $2.1 billion. The purchase was officially finalized in early 2021, after the deal was held up by regulatory probes.

Google Health was officially announced in 2018 and pitched as a division to house the company’s health efforts. Later that year, the company announced that the health team at DeepMind, an artificial intelligence-focused Alphabet subsidiary dedicated to research, would be joining Google Health. 

Since its formation, the division has worked on a slew of health products. In February, the company rolled out an EHR navigation tool called Care Studio that was developed to help doctors and clinicians organize patients’ medical records. The new tool was born out of a collaboration with provider organization Ascension.

The pair faced criticism when news broke that they had been working together since 2018 on a “secret” Project Nightingale that involved patient data. At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported that patients and clinicians were not made aware that Google employees had access to millions of items of patient data.

Late last year, Google Health launched a new Android app that streamlines study recruitment for patients and shows them how their data is being used for research.