Geisinger Health System CEO David Feinberg, M.D. has been tapped by Google to assume a leadership role over its healthcare initiatives.
According to a report from CNBC, “Feinberg's job will be figuring out how to organize Google's fragmented health initiatives, which overlap among many different business groups.” The report, from CNBC’s Christina Farr, added, “The search has been underway for months, according to several people familiar with the search process. Artificial intelligence head Jeff Dean has been deeply involved in the process and personally interviewing candidates.”
Earlier this year, it was rumored that Feinberg—the lead at the Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger for the last four years—could join the Amazon/Berkshire Hathaway/JP Morgan Chase healthcare initiative, but that was put to bed when Feinberg released a statement in June, provided to CNBC’s Farr, in which he said, “I personally remain 100-percent committed to Geisinger and remain excited about the work we are doing and the opportunities ahead as we continue to deliver exceptional care to our patients, our members and our communities." Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase ended up hiring Atul Gawande, M.D., as CEO of the initiative.
As Healthcare Informatics reported on in its Top Ten Tech Trends package a few months ago, new business and technology combinations and ventures are heralding a new era of disruption in U.S. healthcare delivery. As Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland wrote in his story, “Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is leveraging its extensive cloud platform and data analytics capabilities to hone in on trends in population health, [a] Business Insider report noted. The company plans to drive more strategic health system partnerships by identifying issues with electronic health record (EHR) interoperability and currently limited computing infrastructure.”
Indeed, these new “disruptors” are not only making major moves in the healthcare space, but also hiring some of the smartest minds from hospitals and health systems—a trend that some might see as troubling for the traditional healthcare player.
What’s more, the research firm Kalorama Intelligence recently reported that three companies—Google, Apple, and Microsoft—have filed more than 300 healthcare patents between 2013-2017—among them, Google’s 186 patents, mainly focused on investments for DeepMind, its artificial intelligence and Verily , its healthcare and disease research entity.
Feinberg also had some interesting comments about his vision for healthcare at the “HLTH: The Future of Healthcare Conference” this past May. Healthcare Informatics’ Hagland, who was at that event, reported this from Feinberg’s keynote: “For us, what really matters is so much about what’s happening outside the clinics or the hospitals,” he said. “We have 13 hospitals in our system. And I think my job is to close all of them. I know that out of 2,000 beds we have, if people ate right, used alcohol in moderation, didn’t use illegal drugs, wore seatbelts, ate healthily, had access to broccoli and blueberries, and didn’t shoot people with guns, 1,000 of those beds could be gone…”
As it relates to Google, Farr noted in her recent report, “Among the groups interested in healthcare are Google's core search team, its cloud business, the Google Brain artificial intelligence team (one of several groups at Alphabet working on AI), the Nest home automation group and the Google Fit wearables team.”
She added, “One particular area of interest is building out a health team within Nest to help manage users' health at home, as well as to monitor seniors who are choosing to live independently. Nest had been an independent company under Google holding company Alphabet, but was absorbed back into the Google Home team earlier this year.”
Meanwhile, at Geisinger, Feinberg—who will remain at the health system through the end of the year—will be replaced by Jaewon Ryu, M.D., as interim president and CEO.
