Google has reportedly posted several new positions in its Google Brain A.I. unit with descriptions pointing toward the build-out of a “next gen clinical visit experience.” Specifically, the jobs are part of the company’s Medical Digital Assist project, which is working to bring A.I.-driven touch and voice input technologies to doctors. The new jobs seem to mostly pertain to non-technical positions. Rather than directly looking for more researchers, the company wants to hire individuals with business knowledge, such as product managers, who would be tasked with helping the project move forward via business deals. That implies that what the company really needs is to build partnerships to further research and to deploy tests. Of course, that would need to be accomplished while keeping the company within its legal limitations – including HIPAA laws and other similar regulations.
The overarching goal, of course, is to improve input of and access to medical records, making the whole experience smoother and more accurate for physicians. Part of that, according to one of the projects current lead researchers, Dr. Steven Lin, includes utilizing A.I. and machine listening to transcribe visits. That’s a challenging goal that the company has been focused on for quite some time. Primarily, that’s because the system simply can’t afford to make the same types of mistakes that its Google Assistant can make. In a medical environment, there’s a high likelihood that patient lives and the reputation of doctors are on the line – which also places Google’s reputation with A.I. at risk. But the new listings appear to indicate that progress has been made.
Bearing that in mind, these new job listings make quite a lot of sense since the company will need strong leadership when it comes to gaining new partners for the tests. The tools Google Brain is currently working on would likely save doctors dozens of hours or more on a weekly basis. In combination with other projects from Google, it could also eventually lead to a smoother experience for patients regardless of which hospital they visit. So this is something the company will want to get right the first time. Meanwhile, the company hopes to finalize the first phase in August and to begin testing with real-world partners during 2018.