Febbraio, 2021

Data has always been a vital tool in understanding and fighting disease — from Florence Nightingale’s 1800s hand drawn illustrations that showed how poor sanitation contributed to preventable diseases to the first open source repository of datadeveloped in response to the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa. When the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, data again became one of the most critical tools to combat the pandemic. 

A group of researchers, who documented the initial outbreak, quickly joined forces and started collecting data that could help epidemiologists around the world model the trajectory of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The researchers came from University of Oxford, Tsinghua University, Northeastern University and Boston Children’s Hospital, among others. 

However, their initial workflow was not designed for the exponential rise in cases. The researchers turned to Google.org for help. As part of Google’s $100 million contribution to COVID relief, Google.org granted $1.25 million in funding and provided a team of 10 fulltime Google.org Fellows and 7 part-time Google volunteers to assist with the project.  

Google volunteers worked with the researchers to create Global.health, a scalable and open-access platform that pulls together millions of anonymized COVID-19 cases from over 100 countries. This platform helps epidemiologists around the world model the trajectory of COVID-19, and track its variants and future infectious diseases. 

The need for trusted and anonymized case data

When an outbreak occurs, timely access to organized, trustworthy and anonymized data is critical for public health leaders to inform early policy decisions, medical interventions, and allocations of resources — all of which can slow disease spread and save lives. The insights derived from “line-list” data (e.g. anonymized case level information), as opposed to aggregated data such as case counts, are essential for epidemiologists to perform more detailed statistical analyses and model the effectiveness of interventions. 

Volunteers at the University of Oxford started manually curating this data, but it was spread over hundreds of websites, in dozens of formats, in multiple languages. The HealthMap team at Boston Children’s Hospital also identified early reports of COVID-19 through automated indexing of news sites and official sources. These two teams joined forces, shared the data, and published peer-reviewed findings to create a trusted resource for the global community.

Enter the Google.org Fellowship

To help the global community of researchers in this meaningful endeavour, Google.org decided to offer the support of 10 Google.org Fellows who spent 6 months working full-time onGlobal.health, in addition to $1.25M in grant funding. Working hand in hand with the University of Oxford and Boston Children’s Hospital, the Google.org team spoke to researchers and public health officials working on the frontline to understand real-life challenges they faced when finding and using high-quality trusted data — a tedious and manual process that often takes hours. 

Upholding data privacy is key to the platform’s design. The anonymized data used at Global.health comes from open-access authoritative public health sources, and a panel of data experts rigorously checks it to make sure it meets strict anonymity requirements. The Google.org Fellows assisted the Global.health team to design the data ingestion flow to implement best practices for data verification and quality checks to make sure that no personal data made its way into the platform. (All line-list data added to the platform is stored and hosted in Boston Children’s Hospital’s secure data infrastructure, not Google’s.)

Looking to the future

With the support of Google.org and The Rockefeller Foundation, Global.health has grown into an international consortium of researchers at leading universities curating the most comprehensive line-list COVID-19 database in the world.  It includes millions of anonymized records from trusted sources spanning over 100 countries.

Today, Global.health helps researchers across the globe access data in a matter of minutes and a series of clicks. The flexibility of the Global.health platform means that it can be adapted to any infectious disease data and local context as new outbreaks occur. Global.health lays a foundation for researchers and public health officials to access this data no matter their location, be it New York, São Paulo, Munich, Kyoto or Nairobi.

Last February we announced GameSnacks, a HTML5 gaming platform from Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental products. We launched GameSnacks to test whether lightweight, casual games would resonate with people who use the internet via low memory devices on 2G and 3G networks, especially in countries like India and Indonesia.

Since then, millions of people from around the world have played our games. GameSnacks now has more than 100 games built by early game development partners. These games span multiple genres: classics (e.g. Chess), racing games (e.g. Retro Drift), puzzle games (e.g. Element Blocks), and hypercasual games (e.g. Cake Slice Ninja) to list a few. You can check out the full catalog by visiting gamesnacks.com.

Today, we’re sharing how we’ve broadened our efforts by bringing HTML5 games to Google products. We’re also inviting more game developers to join us as we grow the platform.

Finding HTML5 games to play is hard

When I mention HTML5 web gaming to friends and family, they fondly remember Flash gaming sites from 10 or 15 years ago. Web games have come a long way since then. Mobile browsers can now render rich graphics, and engines like Phaser, Construct and Cocos make it easier for developers to build HTML5 games.

HTML5 games tend to be small, enabling them to load quickly in a variety of network conditions, whether on 2G near the outskirts of New Delhi or on an intermittent connection on a New York City subway. Users can play them on any device with a web browser: Android, iOS, and desktop. And across these devices, users don’t need to install anything to play. They simply tap on a link and start playing games immediately.

However, the distribution landscape for HTML5 games is fragmented. Developers have to painstakingly modify their HTML5 games to work across each app they integrate with or web portal they upload to. Discovering HTML5 games to play is often difficult.

We’ve been thinking about how we can make HTML5 game developers’ lives easier to ultimately get more HTML5 games out to more users. Here’s a closer look at how we’re doing this.

A new way to discover HTML5 games across Google products

Back in February 2020, we announced our partnership with Gojek to bring HTML5 games to their users and give developers a new distribution opportunity. Since then, we’ve been bringing the GameSnacks catalog to users across a variety of different Google apps.

First, we’ve made it easy to access GameSnacks games directly from the New Tab page in Chrome, starting with users in India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Kenya. Users can get to gamesnacks.com via the Top Sites icon on Chrome on Android. The Games section is one of the most frequently visited sections of the page.

It wasn’t all that long ago that we introduced Android users to features like Emoji Kitchen and auto-narrated audiobooks. But we like to stay busy, so today we’re highlighting six of the latest Google updates that will make Android phones more secure and convenient — for everyone.

1. Keep your accounts safe with Password Checkup on Android

Lydia Kluge is an active member of the Google Maps Local Guides community, the everyday people passionate about sharing their experiences on Maps. In 2020, she added more than 1,100 contributions on Google Maps in the form of reviews, photos, and places. Coincidentally, Lydia also hiked, ran, and biked 1,100 miles last year. All those adventures earned her the well-deserved Expert Trailblazer and Expert Fact Finder badges on Google Maps.

But Lydia’s journey has been full of adventures long before 2020. Originally from England, Lydia landed in Utah in 2005 for what was meant to be a six-month stint as a ski instructor. She’s been there ever since after falling in love with (and on) the slopes where she met her now-husband.

Over the past fifteen years, the couple traveled to over 30 countries. Along the way, Lydia used Google Maps to find hidden gems — from the best restaurants in Paris to snorkeling spots in Australia.

In 2019, Lydia and her husband welcomed their beautiful baby girl into their family and couldn’t wait to travel with her. But COVID-19 changed their international jet-setting plans. Like many of us, Lydia’s spending more time closer to home. She’s explored Utah’s mountains, deserts, and national and state parks. And, just like in her international travels, Google Maps has been her companion. She’s added and reviewed dozens of nature trails, trailheads, and parks, and created lists of family-friendly activities in Utah. “One thing I’ve missed about working outside of the home is how I can contribute to others and my community,” Lydia said. “Adding these things to Google Maps is a way I can give back.”

Here are Lydia’s tips on how to use Google Maps to explore natural attractions near you:

Find parks and hiking trails on Google Maps

Search outdoor terms like “hiking trails” or “parks near me” to find nearby treks. For most hiking trails, you’ll be able to find ratings, reviews and photos from other hikers. Some may also have useful details like open hours and phone numbers. You can also use the Lists feature on Google Maps to see curated recommendations, like Lydia’s Things to See and Do in St. George and Food and Fun in Park City. Simply search for a town and scroll down to see Featured Lists.

To blind traveling bluesman Joshua Pearson, songwriting is more than just a good melody. “Songwriting gave me a language to talk about my frustrations. And by putting my music out there, I could hopefully let somebody else feel some of what I was feeling.” For Joshua, TalkBack is his main pen and paper for writing songs; it lets him dictate lyrics into his phone and hear them told back to him.

Screen readers, such as Android’s TalkBack, are the primary interface through which Joshua and many other people who are blind or low vision read, write, send emails, share social media, order delivery and even write music. TalkBack speaks the screen aloud, navigates through apps, and facilitates communication with braille, voice and keyboard input. And today we’re releasing an all-new version of TalkBack that includes some of the most highly requested features from the blind and low vision community.

Tap as you please with multi-finger gestures

We’ve added a dozen easy-to-learn and easy-to-use multi-finger gestures that are available with the latest version of TalkBack on Pixel and ​Samsung Galaxy devices from One UI 3 onwards. These gestures make it easier for you to interact with apps and let you perform common actions, such as selecting and editing text, controlling media and finding help. 

We worked closely with people in the blind and low vision community to develop these easy-to-remember gestures and make sure they felt natural. For example, instead of navigating through multiple menus and announcements to start or stop your favorite podcast, it’s now as simple as double tapping the screen with two fingers. 

Read or skim with just a swipe

Reading and listening is easier with new controls that help you find the most relevant information. For instance, you can swipe right or left with three fingers to hear only the headlines, listen word-by-word or even character-by-character. And then with a single swipe up or down you can navigate through the text. 

Say what? There’s new Voice Commands 

Starting with TalkBack 9.1, you can now swipe up and right to use TalkBack’s new voice commands. TalkBack will stop talking and await your instructions. With over 25 different commands, you can say “find” to locate text on the screen or “increase speech rate” to make TalkBack speak more quickly. 

Do things your way with more customization and language options

While we put a lot of thought into this redesign, one thing we’ve learned from working with the community is that everyone interacts with their phones in their own way — which makes customization important. You can now add or remove options in the TalkBack menu or reading controls. Additionally, gestures can be assigned or reassigned to scores of settings, actions and navigation controls.

Lastly, we’re adding support for two new languages in TalkBack’s braille keyboard: Arabic and Spanish.

Joining forces for accessibility

The all-new TalkBack is the result of our collaboration with trusted testers and Samsung, who co-developed this release. ​TalkBack is now the default screen reader on all ​Samsung Galaxy devices from One UI 3 onwards, making it easier to enjoy a consistent and productive screen reader experience across even more devices.

To help everyone keep up with all the changes, we’ve created an entirely new tutorial to make it easier to make the most of TalkBack — there’s even a test pad to practice new gestures. With these new features and collaborations we hope that more people can find useful and creative ways to use TalkBack. Who knows, you might even find lyrical inspiration like Joshua. 

Healthcare professionals are healers, not data clerks. Yet many clinicians spend half their day on a computer navigating electronic health records (EHRs) and other systems. Because health records are often scattered across multiple systems, getting a full picture of a patient’s health requires a great deal of clinicians’ time, energy, and resources. These gaps in patient information can contribute to less effective and efficient care. The Google Health team started to think about how we could bring Google’s experience in organizing complex information to healthcare.

Driven by this idea, we created Care Studio, a software solution that provides a comprehensive view of a patient’s records and allows clinicians to quickly search through complex patient information. Care Studio is built for clinicians and works alongside EHR systems; it streamlines workflows and supports more proactive care. We’ve been working with the healthcare organization Ascension on a pilot of Care Studio focused on data quality and product safety with a small group of clinicians based in Nashville, TN and Jacksonville, FL. The pilot is now expanding to more physicians and nurses in the clinical setting.

How Care Studio supports clinicians 

Care Studio streamlines key clinician workflows so that teams can quickly get the information they need to care for patients. It brings together patient records from the multiple EHRs an organization uses – giving clinicians a centralized view of patient data and the ability to search across these records.

We’ve honed our search capabilities based on medical terminology and clinical shorthand, so that clinicians can simply type what they’re looking for into a search bar and instantly surface relevant patient record information. Still, a patient’s history can be long and complex, making important details difficult to find. Care Studio uses Google technology to display relevant information in fewer clicks. For example, Care Studio can automatically organize the medications in a patient’s history with information on dosing and when they were prescribed. The tool also makes it easy to find pertinent information, including lab results, procedure orders, medication orders and progress notes. 

Care Studio harmonizes medical data across different systems. For example, even though health systems report measurements like blood pressure or glucose levels using different units, Care Studio automatically converts them so they are easier for a clinician to understand and compare.

Keeping health information private and secure 

We know healthcare data is sensitive and personal, and it’s our responsibility to keep it private and secure. Google does not own, nor do we ever sell, patient data. This data from Care Studio cannot be used for advertising. Our team designed Care Studio to adhere to industry best practices and regulations, including HIPAA. 

We implement administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect information. Patient data is encrypted and isolated in a controlled environment, separate from other customer data and consumer data. Consistent with industry best practices, we also participate in regular audits and external certifications such as ISO 27001 and SOC2/3, where auditors validate Care Studio’s processes for safeguarding customer data. With these certifications, third-party specialists make sure we follow a framework of controls for a comprehensive and continually evolving model for managing security.

Taking our next step toward clinical impact 

Based on feedback from Ascension, we’ve fine tuned Care Studio so it displays relevant clinical information from their systems accurately and in a way that’s useful to their physicians and nurses. Now we’re ready to expand our pilot in the clinical setting to further optimize the product for broader usage at Ascension. A select group of clinicians at facilities in Nashville, TN and Jacksonville, FL will use an early release of Care Studio alongside their existing tools during care delivery. We hope to get their feedback to further improve its usability, make the tool more useful to them and better integrate into current workflows. 

Our aim is to bring Google’s experience in organizing complex information into intuitive, useful formats for the healthcare industry. As more Ascension clinicians begin using Care Studio, we look forward to supporting them in caring for their patients.