Under the umbrella of Google Health, Google has been researching the health sector for more than a decade and has initiated numerous projects, further developed them, in some cases abandoned them or outsourced them to external companies together with partners. A new project has now been presented in which the smartphone is used and is intended to potentially replace the stethoscope.
Google has been active in very different areas of health for many years, working both on digital platforms such as Google Health and on research for new approaches. Above all, blood sugar measurement via a contact lens and various optical detections via smartphone cameras have become well-known. With the latest project, the microphone of the smartphone is now to be tapped to gain insights.
The smartphone is intended to be placed on the chest with a standard microphone, providing the same – and better – insights as a stethoscope. So heartbeat, breathing, rattling, respiratory disorders and other things can be recognized or at least discovered with this very simple instrument. The first results are supposed to be promising, but you are still at the very beginning and have only given an insight into the direction in which the journey is going.
Google has not announced any precise plans but rather published the whole thing as a status update for the individual projects. Interestingly, there are also large overlaps with individual Alphabet projects, which also have a strong focus on the areas of medicine and health and often go back to Google projects. That’s why I had been wondering for a long time what alphabet is still used for at all.