Thoughts on Google Health and its Potential

Just some thoughts about what could be Google’s most important product going forward

I have been using the Apple Watch for a few years now and have been impressed with their progression, especially over the last two years with the Series 3 and 4 watches, especially this year with the the Apple Watch getting fall detection and an ECG reader. While those last two bits do not apply to me directly, it did interest me that Apple broke out the “Health” features of the watch such as the heart rate alerts, breathing, ECG, and fall detection features of the watch from the “Fitness” features such as the pedometer, GPS, swimming features, running app, and more. Not everyone is an athlete, but I do like how Apple is continuing to broaden its Health offering to expand the possible addressable market with the Apple Watch. I feel like they did not want the watch to become the GoPro of smart watches and have self-identifying athletes buy the watch, but it ever really expand beyond that. The only problem with the Apple watch is it is still a niche ecosystem when you pull back into the larger scope of things. Android far and away is the dominant operating system worldwide. By limiting the Apple Watch to iPhone users, Apple is limiting the potential health benefits to a small, and wealthy segment of the world. And that’s okay, Apple has never been a mass-market company. They make and sell affordable-luxury products by distilling and streamlining the the user experience into something excellent and a lot of people are willing to pay for that. While there are flagship Android phones like the Galaxy S9, I do feel like Google is does its best job when it democratizes technology whether its Maps with Google Maps, Photography with Google Photos, video with YouTube, etc. The cool thing about the Google approach to things is that a $50 or $100 Android phone gets access to the same top-notch software as a $750–1000 Galaxy phone. I right now Google is pretty basic, but has been getting better this year, namely by adding the more user-friendly ring system that Apple pioneered with the Apple Watch, allowing people to set fitness goals, and adding a breathe feature like the Apple Watch. WearOS watches are kinda all over the place and really focused on fashion lately. I would like to see Google make focus more on health features in 2019 like being able to bring you Medical Records with you on your phone/WearOS device and higher-level health tracking like ECG readers, sleep tracking, or even blood glucose monitoring. Also, I think that Google pushing WearOS into fitness bands should be a thing. If they could have a variety of fitness wearables like Fitbit does I think that would go a long way towards democratizing this useful and potentially life-changing technology. It shouldn’t cost $250 for a watch and a $750 smartphone to take advantage of this software. I would also hope that maybe Google could expand WearOS into more specialized wearables for the elderly, diabetics, heart conditions, etc. There have been several WearOS updates that have given me hope that Google is starting to take health and fitness more seriously. I feel strongly that this could be the most valuable product to a wide variety of people that they could possibly offer going forward, even more so than Gmail, Maps, Photos, Search, etc.

Here are a few places I’d hope they focus on going forward with Google Health:

• Cheaper Fitness Bands
• EKG Reading
• Blood Glucose monitoring
• Heart Rate as a standard feature
• Medical Record Syncing
• Reproductive Health
• Medical ID for Emergency Responders
• Medical Appointment reminders with Google Assistant
• Medication Reminders with Google Assistant and WearOS
• Sleep Tracking
• Wheelchair Support
• Swimming Exercising
• Organ Donation Sign-ups
• Medical Research Volunteering
• Medical Care-Follow ups