Google hired a former head of the U.S. Food and drug administration as its new global digital health strategy executive. Bakur Patel has worked at the FDA for more than a decade and recently became the chief digital health officer of Google's global strategy and innovation "I look forward to learning from the health teams of Google and alphabet to help establish a unified digital health and regulatory strategy," he wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the move on Monday
Like all major technology companies, Google has further promoted the development of health and healthcare in the past few years, but the results have been mixed.
Google's ambitions range from algorithms for mining big data to developing disease detection tools to making wearable devices full of health functions. But its strategy has experienced some turbulence: the company dissolved Google's health department in August 2021, dispersed its employees into various plans, and the head of the Department left the company.
Patel is not the first alpha executive from a federal health agency. Robert California, the current FDA Commissioner, was a senior consultant to alpha, while Karen DeSalvo, Google's chief health officer, is a former director of the office of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator.
