Alphabet’s Google Launching AI Projects Targeting Health Care

Alphabet’s (GOOG) Google said Tuesday it’s launching generative artificial intelligence tools targeting health care.

“We’re bringing new capabilities to our models with the hope of making generative AI more helpful to health care organizations and people’s health,” Yossi Matias, Google vice president, engineering and research, said in a blog post.

The company said it initially launched its AI model MedLM for chest X-ray classification projects.

“We’re starting with chest x-rays because they are critical in detecting lung and heart conditions,” Matias said. MedLM for Chest X-ray is available to certain testers in an experimental preview on Google Cloud.

The company is “researching how a version of the Gemini model, fine-tuned for the medical domain, can unlock new capabilities for advanced reasoning, understanding a high volume of context, and processing multiple modalities,” according to the blog post.

Fitbit and Google Research units teamed up to build a personalized health AI model for new features in Fitbit’s mobile app, the blog said.

The AI model is “being fine-tuned to deliver personalized coaching capabilities, like actionable messages and guidance, that can be individualized based on personal health and fitness goals,” Google said.

Separately, Google said it teamed with Apollo Radiology International to launch AI-backed screening projects for tuberculosis and lung and breast cancer in India.

“Over the next 10 years, Apollo Radiology International will use these [AI models] to provide 3 million free AI-powered screenings for TB, lung cancer, and breast cancer, helping hundreds of thousands more people across India access timely care,” Shravya Shetty, principal engineer, Health AI, Google Health, said in a blog post.

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