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Google is in no rush to apply artificial intelligence to health care.

Driving the news: "We're not in a hurry," Google senior vice president of technology and society James Manyika told Axios' Erin Brodwin at HLTH in Las Vegas on Monday. "The only race we feel we're in is the race to do this right."

The big picture: Indeed, the "move fast and break things" mantra that so pervaded tech years ago appears to have been supplanted by a more delicate message, several builders and investors told Axios on the sidelines of HLTH.

"We're being slow and deliberative," Sunita Mishra, chief medical officer of Amazon Health Services, told Erin during a meeting at the conference.

"We're growing slow to grow fast," said Fortuna Health CEO Nikita Singareddy, meaning the company is spending a lot of its time assessing patient needs and use patterns.

Meanwhile, Google's AI-powered efforts span medical imaging, dermatology, genetic testing, and drug discovery.

Context: Data privacy concerns have plagued companies across health tech as regulators including the FTC have begun a more aggressive crackdown on breaches of health information.

Catch up fast: The handling of public data by large tech companies has long vexed consumers, and Google is no exception.

Google and its subsidiary DeepMind last year faced a class-action lawsuit alleging they unlawfully used the confidential medical records of 1.6 million National Health Service patients without their knowledge or consent. (That lawsuit was subsequently dismissed on the grounds that it did not meet the bar for bringing a representative action.)

In 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported that doctors and patients weren't notified of a program Google ran with hospital system Ascension Health that allegedly provided 150 Google employees with access to patient data.

A lawsuit against Google and the University of Chicago Medical Center accused the institutions of processing identifiable medical records. (That suit was dismissed in September after a judge ruled the patient who filed the suit failed to adequately prove damages suffered.)

What's next: As large language models in health care mature, Google foresees a future wherein the potential for breaches of patient data is narrowed.

Zoom in: "There are a lot of applications that don't make this presumption that you need first somebody's personal, private data," Manyika says, citing CT scans as one example.

The typically hourslong process to highlight cancerous tumors can be done in a manner of minutes using AI that assesses images.

"You don't need the patient's personal data to do that," he says. "You're looking at images or using techniques to simply enable the physicians and care providers to be able to do that work of contouring."

Reality check: Patient data privacy remains a concern — and Manyika says there will be new questions emerging.

For example, he noted: "Could it be possible that they might inadvertently portray patterns that reflect an individual's data not in the data set?"

With its advertising efforts, the tech giant is also trying to "make sure we don't even provide ads targeted to people based on their health conditions," to mitigate the comingling of user data.

Google SVP: "We're not in a hurry" on AI in health care

Google is in no rush to apply AI to health care, SVP James Manyika told Axios at HLTH.

Axios Pro's Erin Brodwin sits on stage with Google SVP James Manyika

Axios Pro Deals Erin Brodwin in conversation with Google SVP of technology and society James Manyika. Photo: Claire Rychlewski, Axios

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<a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="Google" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/09/11/google-pledge-responsible-ai-fund" data-vars-content-id="84f3c318-d367-41a3-896e-f2077910ca7a" data-vars-headline="Google SVP: &quot;We&#x27;re not in a hurry&quot; on AI in health care" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/09/11/google-pledge-responsible-ai-fund" target="_self">Google</a> is in no rush to apply artificial intelligence to health care.Driving the news: &quot;We&#x27;re not in a hurry,&quot; Google senior vice president of technology and society James Manyika told Axios&#x27; Erin Brodwin at HLTH in Las Vegas on Monday. &quot;The only race we feel we&#x27;re in is the race to do this right.&quot;

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Google SVP: "We're not in a hurry" on AI in health care

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