Wealth can’t buy health, but can technology? Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, thinks it can and is using the search engine to try to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease, which his genes say he has an 80% chance of getting. Online clinical trial recruitment and health research is already progressing at an impressive rate, but this is different, and could end up being an important model for pharma and healthcare industry.
To enroll, willing Parkinson’s patients pay a small fee to show they are committed. They then receive a test kit which they spit into and return for analysis, along with a lifestyle questionnaire. Google technology will then look for patterns in the data.
Research in Parkinson’s, and most diseases, has historically been limited to small groups of patients to test a hypothesis. But collecting evidence and analysing it through complex algorithms will unveil all kinds of new insights. Sergey Brin explained it in more detail in a recent interview with Wired Magazine.
This is definitely one to watch. Not least because Google are famous for developing innovative new software (think Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Buzz, Google Wave, etc.) So one day when you ‘Google’ a condition, it might not just be articles you receive, but analysis of all the evidence to help you guide the clinical development pathways of new drugs. Even if such a big project does not come to fruition, Brin’s approach could be replicated for other conditions, which would surely have significant implications on both the patient and the healthcare industry.
Tags: digital pharma, Google, Parkinson's, pharma online, Sergey Brin