Studying respiratory illnesses
Weve partnered with researchers from Harvard Medical School and Boston Childrens Hospital for the first study, which will help scientists and public health communities better understand respiratory illnesses, including influenza and COVID-19.
This Respiratory Health Study will be open to adults in the U.S., 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. 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 theyve 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, says Dr. John Brownstein, professor at Harvard Medical School and Chief Innovation Officer of the Boston Childrens Hospital. 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.
In collaboration with Google Research, this first study utilizes federated learning and analyticsa privacy technology that keeps a persons data stored on the device, while allowing researchers to discover aggregate insights based on encrypted, combined updates from many devices. This means researchers in this study can examine trends to understand the link between mobility (such as the number of daily trips a person makes outside the home) and the spread of COVID-19, This same approach powers typing predictions on Gboard, without Google seeing what individuals type.read more
Advancing health research with Google Health Studies
