Google recently announced its first research app called “Google Health Studies” that will help healthcare organizations, and researchers to recruit large volunteers and expand the diversity in the participant population. To make it easier, anyone with an Android phone can take part in the health studies by answering the survey questions and giving relevant data. The app is available on Google Play Store.  This app is a one of its kind platform that urges the general population to contribute to medical research. The first study that will be conducted on the Google Health Research app will be focused on ‘respiratory health’ owing to the current COVID-9 infection. 

The first study on the app

Google has partnered with researchers from Harvard Medical School and Boston children’s Hospital for its first study that will focus on respiratory illnesses including influenza and COVID-19. This study is conducted to understand the ongoing threat of respiratory illnesses and get more data on them to tackle them. This Respiratory Health Research will be open to adults in the United States and will concentrate on how these types of diseases arise in populations and vary through risk factors such as age and travel habits. The Google Health Studies app will be used by research participants to periodically self-report how they feel, what symptoms they may have, any preventive steps they have taken, and additional details such as the results of COVID-19 or influenza tests. Volunteers will serve their group in medical research by taking part in this study and contribute to global efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Privacy of data

According to Google, “The app is built on three principles: keeping information safe, treating it responsibly, and putting participants in control. This Respiratory Health Research will be open to adults in the United States and will concentrate on how these types of diseases arise in populations and vary through risk factors such as age and travel habits. The Google Health Studies app will be used by research participants to periodically self-report how they feel, what symptoms they may have, any preventive steps they have taken, and additional details such as the results of COVID-19 or influenza tests. Volunteers will serve their group in medical research by taking part in this study and contribute to global efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The app will also make it easy for participants to “understand their contributions to each study, as well as when they become available, access research results.”

This first study, in collaboration with Google Research, utilizes federated learning and analytics, a privacy technology that keeps the data of an individual stored on the computer while enabling researchers to discover collective insights from multiple devices based on encrypted, combined updates. This means that researchers will explore patterns in this study to understand the relation between mobility (such as the number of regular trips a person makes outside the home) and the spread of COVID-19. This same method allows Gboard to type predictions without Google seeing what people type.