As per the report by GeekWire, Google has recently acquired Senosis, a Seattle based health startup that’s been making mobile apps to identify and monitor health conditions without the need for additional hardware.
Under Shwetak Patel, a computer science and electrical engineering professor at the University of Washington, the company has developed tools to detect jaundice in infants and measure hemoglobin in blood just by using smartphone’s camera.
It marks the latest acquisition for Patel, whose past startup ventures have landed in the hands of companies such as Belkin International and Sears.
Patel along with his team of about a dozen engineers and physicians succeeded in turning a smartphone into one of a monitoring device that collects health metrics to diagnose pulmonary function, hemoglobin counts and other critical health information.
The apps- SpiroSmart and SpiroCall, HemaApp and OsteoApp after reviewed by Food and Drug Administration.
“Those sensors that are already on the mobile phone can be repurposed in interesting new ways, where you can actually use those for diagnosing certain kinds of diseases,” Patel said.
The acquisition of Senosis does represent Google’s continued interest in the digital health arena. In 2015, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, launched a new subsidiary known as Verily which was designed to bring together technology, data science and healthcare in a way that would allow people to “enjoy longer and healthier lives.”
The acquisition will likely help Google boost its efforts to tackle health issues as part of the company’s plans for world domination. Its AI firm, DeepMind, has been working on machine learning tech to detect eye conditions and help fight blindness. The search giant also gathers fitness data on users’ phones and from wearable trackers.
Although there has been no official statement about how or where the team of Senosis will work, but GeekWire’ssource said that they might be operating from Seattle and form the backbone of a digital health project.