Google Unveils mHealth App, New Study on Respiratory Illnesses

Google has launched an mHealth app for healthcare studies, allowing researchers and providers to collect data from participants using Android phones.

In unveiling the Google Health Studies app this morning, the company also announced the first study on the platform: a project being launched by Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital to gather data on respiratory illnesses, including influenza and COVID-19.

“This Respiratory Health Study will be open to adults in the US, and will focus on identifying how these types of illnesses evolve in communities and differ across risk factors such as age, and activities such as travel,” Jon Morgan, a product manager for Google Health, and Paul Eastham, an engineering director for Google Research, wrote in a blog posted on the Google site. “Study participants will use the Google Health Studies app to regularly self-report how they feel, what symptoms they may be experiencing, any preventative measures they’ve taken, and additional information such as COVID-19 or influenza test results. By taking part in this study, volunteers can represent their community in medical research, and contribute to global efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.”

"With COVID-19 emerging alongside seasonal respiratory pathogens, research is now needed more than ever to develop more effective treatments and mitigation strategies,” John Brownstein, PhD, a professor at Harvard Medical School and Chief Innovation Officer of the Boston Children’s Hospital, said in the blog. “Google Health Studies provides people with a secure and easy way to take part in medical research, while letting researchers discover novel epidemiological insights into respiratory diseases.”

Google’s app is the latest attempt to expand the universe for connected health projects that aim to collect data from large or targeted populations. The challenge behind these programs is to reach as many people as possible, particularly those in underserved communities or regions.

In 2015, Apple launched the ResearchKit platform, focusing on data collected from its devices. One year later, Cornell Tech’s Small Data Lab, with help from the non-profit Open mHealth foundation and touchlab, a New York-based mHealth developer focused on Android platforms, unveiled Research Stack, a platform focused on gathering data from Android phones. 

On the consumer-facing side, Apple introduced its Apple Health Records app in 2018 to allow users to collect and share their medical information from participating healthcare providers. One year later, Cornell, the University of California at San Francisco and the Commons Project unveiled CommonHealth, an Android-based mHealth platform.

The Commons Project announced earlier this month that its app is now being used in 230 health systems across the country.

“The COVID pandemic has accelerated the need for the safe sharing of health data as medical consultations go online and individuals are required to demonstrate COVID test and vaccination status in order to travel, work, study and undertake other social activities,” JP Pollak, co-founder and chief architect at The Commons Project, said in a press release. “CommonHealth extends the privacy-centered data portability and interoperability model pioneered by Apple Health to the 55 percent of Americans who have Android devices.”