Google on Tuesday unveiled new partnerships and initiatives in the field of health at its annual gathering known as “The Check Up.” Its Google Health team shared updates on new features coming to the search engine, tools to build health apps, and the latest advances in AI-powered health research.
The company talked about new partnerships to develop AI-assisted ultrasounds for cancer treatment and tuberculosis tests There was also an emphasis on the most recent release of their medical large-language model, which is dubbed Med-PaLM.
Google launched Med-PaLM for the first time at the end of in the year. It’s designed to provide top-quality responses to medical inquiries. Med-PaLM is the first AI system that was able to earn the required passing score, which is higher than 60%, in multiple-choice questions that were like those used for U.S. medical licensing exams.
The company claimed that the second version of the software, Med-PaLM 2 has consistently scored on the “expert” level on medical exam questions. Med-PaLM 2 has surpassed 90% accuracy and has scored 18% better than the previous results.
Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam, a research director for Google Health, said the company is also evaluating Med-PaLM’s results against responses from real clinicians and doctors. The Med-PaLM responses are analyzed for accuracy in fact and bias as well as a potential harm.
Karthikesalingam gave controlled demonstrations -but the demonstration wasn’t live of how Med-PaLM 2 could be able to answer questions such as “what are the first warning signs of pneumonia?” as well as “can incontinence be cured?” In some instances, Med-PaLM 2’s answers were comparable and more precise in comparison to the answers the clinicians had given. However, in some instances, Med-PaLM 2’s answers were not as precise.
“You can see from this sort of work that we’re still learning,” Karthikesalingam spoke during the ceremony.
Due to the delicate nature of medical information, Karthikesalingam believes it will take some time before this technology becomes accessible to consumers on a regular basis. It is crucial to be able to innovate in a responsible manner within a controlled setting.
Google is continuing to collaborate with researchers and experts in Med-PaLM. Karthikesalingam stated that Google will provide more information about the project in the near future.
“The potential here is tremendous,” he added, “but it’s crucial that real-world applications are explored in a responsible and ethical manner.”
