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Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

economist.com

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Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#121

Post by beenHot400 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #118
Gehlitio wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you life with something chronic? Something were not a lot of people are doing research and we're there was no real discovery in the last 20 years? Because I do and you know how scattered the field of medicine is? There is one realistic way of getting more people with chronic issues new threatments and it's data. Lots and lots of it. IF someone can pull that of while protecting the individuals I believe it's alphab…

Free medicine, but we alter your gene code to put ads in your poop.

Seems like a fair trade.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#122

Post by verisimi »

GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #21

Please no. They have too much info on everyone already

Lol. 100% this ^^

A merger of technology privacy invading, ai-guiding, rip off processes AND the ability to direct your health for profit. With government lobbyists in both pockets.

What could go right?!?

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#125

Post by TuringNYC »

Rygian wrote: post #78
cardosof wrote: post #72

Just imagine a world where they revolutionized healthcare as they did with advertising!

Easy to imagine: patient records will now include ads for expensive drugs. Doctors can make $ on the side by referring patients to Google Pharma. Drug labs can dig a moat around their products by buying ad placements in doctors' digital prescription pads.

So ads for drugs but the product is free like Google search? Count me in. My mom spends half her social security check on medical care.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#126

Post by sargun »

Rygian wrote: post #78
cardosof wrote: post #72

Just imagine a world where they revolutionized healthcare as they did with advertising!

Easy to imagine: patient records will now include ads for expensive drugs. Doctors can make $ on the side by referring patients to Google Pharma. Drug labs can dig a moat around their products by buying ad placements in doctors' digital prescription pads.

This already exists: * there are prescription management companies (middlemen) who already advertise ("recommend") to doctors * doctors no longer directly get kickbacks, because the FDA * you don't think drug companies don't already control what doctors see? https://pulsepoint.com/hcp-marketing * who do you think finances medicine information?

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#128

Post by skywal_l »

bluetrolliage wrote: post #127

This is nothing new. MSFT, Alphabet, AMZN, Oracle have all been making plays for years trying to get into the healthcare industry. It's a huge, bloated industry

This is also an heavily regulated industry in terms of patient data protection, software quality, part availability, etc. It will be interesting to see how big tech will deal with having an overbearing regulator breathing down their neck.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#129

Post by randcraw »

cardosof wrote: post #72

Just imagine a world where they revolutionized healthcare as they did with advertising!

Google will succeed at healthcare only after medical decisions can be reduced to A/B tests. That is to say, never.

After wasting many millions on failures like Calico, Google hasn't learned that healthcare is a service that's continuous, custom, and complex. And since the "customer's" health and life are at stake, maintaining health is a damned sight more important and difficult to do sufficiently well than Google's current business: spam.

Tech companies like Google simply don't have the DNA or the persistence to succeed in science-based markets driven by R&D and heavy regulation. They want faster profits driven by higher multipliers and lower standards for accuracy than you can get in healthcare, where accuracy really counts and every case is a little bit different. In medicine it really matters if you get the right answer for your A/B test, otherwise someone may die or they may sue you. That's why so little of healthcare has been automated, and why that's likely to continue.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#130

Post by cupofpython »

Gehlitio wrote: post #120
nicolapede wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IF someone can pull that of while protecting the individuals I believe it's alphabet. Together with deep mind and all the other research they do. What makes you think they will protect the "individuals"? From a privacy persepctive, I would say they have no clear incentive in doing that, given individuals are the product they sell to companies that need to push ads into society.

Checkout their last Google Io. They know how they make their money and don't hide it. But they make you as an individual disappear. It's a much better compromise than from any other company and they drive this topic for years.

you dont disappear. you become embedded. they are metaphorically assigning you a number and stripping you of an identity. It is dehumanizing.

At the end of the day, it's just you by a different name. Instead of owning it and claiming "we have this information on Gehlitio" they say things like "We have these generalizations about anybody who happens to use HN, speaks in English, bought X Y and Z, subscribes to A, "

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