Google posts 4 openings in its Brain group, a project to build a smart EHR

Julie Spitzer -

Google is expanding Medical Digital Assist, an early-stage research project that hopes to bring artificial intelligence to physician offices, CNBC reports.

Four internal job postings reviewed by CNBC revealed Google wants to build the "next gen clinical visit experience," and the company wants to use voice recognition and touch technologies to do so.

The project is part of the company's healthcare group called Google Brain, which is wrapped under its Google AI division. Google declined to comment on the CNBC report but pointed to its work with Stanford (Calif.) Medicine.

Google Brain, known internally as "Medical Brain," began a study with Stanford on the use of digital scribes that use speech recognition and machine learning tools to automatically fill patient charts in real-time, acting as a smart EHR. So far, the effort is facing a key challenge: accuracy.

"This is even more of a complicated, hard problem than we originally thought," Steven Lin, MD, a Stanford clinician who is helping lead the project, told CNBC. "But if solved, it can potentially unshackle physicians from EHRs and bring providers back to the joys of medicine: actually interacting with patients."

While the first phase of the study is expected to conclude in August, Google has the "ambitious goal" of working with external healthcare organizations by the end of the year to test its efforts, one job listing stated, according to CNBC.  

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