News Feature | August 25, 2015

What Google's Transition To Alphabet Means For Healthcare

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Google Shopping Acquires Rangespan

Alphabet’s focus on technology will have a positive impact on healthcare.

Google co-founder Larry Page recently announced the creation of Alphabet, a company that will serve as the parent holding company of Google and all of its affiliates. Page will become CEO of Alphabet, and Sergey Brin will serve as president. Sundar Pichai, previously was product chief of Google, was tabbed as Google’s next CEO of Google, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.

Writing in a Google blog post, Page explained, “We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth ideas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.

“We believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with [cofounder] Sergey [Brin] and me in service to them as needed.”

The creation of Alphabet stands to have a positive impact on healthcare in a number of significant ways.

Forbes suggests the shift “could catalyze a new wave of product development” for healthcare. Alphabet will also have a strong initial healthcare focus, according to Page’s announcement memo, where he discusses the following ventures:

  • Calico, a biotech company, headed by the former CEO of Genentech, is researching the biology of aging and has already committed hundreds of millions of dollars to a new research facility.
  • Life Sciences, a wing of Google is working with Novartis to develop smart contact lenses to monitor bodily functions, such as blood sugar levels, via miniscule sensors, to help treat diabetics.
  • Google Ventures, Google’s hedge fund, continues to invest more of its dollars in healthcare, and the fund just invested in the new CRISPR gene-editing platform, which should enable scientists to easily cut-and-paste DNA.
  • Google X was formed as Google’s research arm, but has recently invested more deeply in the healthcare sphere, hiring a cardiologist from Harvard to lead its Baseline Study, according to Forbes.
  • Dexcom, a leading glucose-monitoring company, has also announced it is partnering with the company’s Life Sciences group to make smaller, better devices for people with diabetes. Dexcom hopes that by combining its own technology with miniaturized electronics from Google “when we get through the development we’ll have something that is very, very low cost and very small,” says Dexcom vice president Steve Pacelli.

“Google is trying to buy into technology that’s changing older industries and suits its big data expertise,” Flatiron CEO Nat Turner told the Wall Street Journal last year. (Google Ventures invested more than $100 million in Flatiron, a startup that analyzes cancer data.) “Health care is one of the only industries that haven’t been disrupted a lot by technology yet.”