In addition to Apple and other major tech players, Google has shown interest in health care technology. However, gaining a foothold in this industry may prove more difficult than initially expected for these tech giants. The head of Google Health recently announced that he is leaving his position to become the CEO of Cerner, a major electronic health record (EHR) company. Some people have taken this shift as a signal that Google is leaving the health care space, especially since the Google Health division is now being disbanded. At the same time, Apple also acknowledged that it would scale back its Health Habit project, which aimed to create a new app for logging fitness, managing chronic illness, and connecting with clinicians.
What Is the Future of Big Tech in Health Care?
This exit may be surprising to some people, but industry experts largely recognize that the space is challenging. Using evidence-based practices is difficult and not always what big tech companies dedicated to innovation are used to implementing in their products. Moreover, the issue that patients have with the system is based less on technology and more on the overall experience, so providing new systems will not necessarily make a meaningful difference. The health care space is already crowded, so finding a niche can be difficult, especially when so many variables are involved with the delivery of care.
Large tech firms have historically struggled to enter health care. For example, Microsoft tried to collect and aggregate medical information directly from users through Health Vault, but gave up after several years and closed its doors in 2019. Even Google had its own system for collecting consumer health data that was abandoned in 2011. Apple has had more success over the years in its efforts to integrate the Health app with several EHR systems. With Health Habit getting scaled down, it is now unclear how much of a commitment Apple will continue to have to the health care sector even with this success.
One of the big remaining questions relates to another tech giant – namely, Amazon, which has already experienced scaling issues after recently launching Amazon Care. The head of the project said that thousands of employees would be needed to get the project in a position to scale properly. In today’s environment of a massive health care worker shortage, this is not an easy prospect. This project in many ways looks like Apple’s Health Habit. If Apple is throwing in the towel, Amazon may do the same in the near future, especially given the hurdles that remain. At the same time, these tech giants are used to massive failures, so they may all come back to the market with new products and approaches. However, with many repeated failures, there is always the possibility that this sector gets dropped entirely.
What Are the Issues Tech Firms Need to Tackle?
Health care remains an incredible opportunity for big tech firms, so there will likely always be some team working on these products. However, headway remains unlikely in the absence of substantial resources committed to the challenges. With the exception of EHR companies, virtually no tech firm is funneling all its money into health care technology. This becomes even more of an issue when you consider that most large tech firms have health care projects scattered across the organization without an enterprise-level strategy. Often, this approach is by design, but it may not be the right strategy for achieving displacement in a $4 trillion industry.
Another problem that big tech firms need to address is how to create products. Most firms are not pursuing meaningful partnerships, which means that their products add an additional cost to an industry that is already heavily inflated. Moreover, products can create additional layers in a workflow for clinicians that is already onerous, so adoption rates could be low. The picture becomes more complicated when you consider the data privacy issues and the fact that many clinicians do not view patient-generated data as clinical evidence. Some people have called for a more collaborative approach saying that doing this could actually disrupt the market and lower costs, but this is unlikely to happen.
A clear distinction needs to be made between health care tech and health care services. Firms have experienced success in terms of tech solutions, but entering the service space is where everything gets messy. These services require employee support that is often simply not feasible and above the magnitude that even companies like Google and Apple can tackle. For this reason, a collaborative approach could make the most sense, but it is difficult to imagine these top firms working together on a health care project. Even if large firms did collaborate, there is still the problem of gaining public trust, especially when people have often developed relationships with their physicians over the course of decades. Perhaps the next move is a large tech firm buying out an established health care system to carry out its vision.