Google’s Push Into Health Care May Spur Other Health-Tech Companies To Accelerate Their Product Development
"Any time Google tries to enter your industry, that's a very big competitive threat," said Nilesh Chandra, senior leader in PA Consulting's health care business. In other health and technology news, IBM is tweaking its software that allows its supercomputer to recommend cancer treatments and a hospital turns to tech to help solve pervasive hand-washing issue.
Modern Healthcare:
Google Is Here. Now The Rest Of Healthcare Has To Keep Up
As Google's parent company, Alphabet, continues its push into healthcare, it could spur more traditional healthcare technology companies to race to keep up, pushing the industry overall toward more dramatic change. If traditional companies don't innovate quickly, they will fall behind and might lose business, according to analysts and industry leaders. (Arndt, 7/31)
Stat:
IBM Adding Regional Treatment Advice And Real Patient Data To Cancer Product
IBM is modifying its Watson software that recommends cancer treatments so that it reflects geographic differences in how patients are treated around the world, according to a recording of a staff meeting reviewed by STAT. That represents a major shift for IBM on a venture that the company has aggressively promoted as having the potential to revolutionize medicine. It has long marketed Watson for Oncology as being based on the expertise of doctors at the prestigious New York cancer center who trained it. (Swetlitz and Ross, 7/31)
MPR News:
High-Tech Badges Track Hand-Washing By Hospital Medical Staff To Prevent Infections
Hand-washing — or the lack of it — is a big issue. ... North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale has been testing an Ecolab hand sanitation monitoring system that tracks about 100 caregivers in an oncology ward to see if they sanitize their hands before treating patients. (Moylan, 8/1)
