APRIL 18, 2008

Google Craves Your DNA

As soon as I turned on my computer this morning, my Google Health Advisor (GHA) greeted me and asked, “How are you feeling today, Ryan?”  I responded that an itchy throat and runny nose had kept me from sleeping most of the night.

“You made a similar complaint 42 days ago, when I diagnosed you with a minor cold,” my GHA quickly responded.  “Do you have any other symptoms, such as itchy or watery eyes, redness or swelling of the skin, or headache?”

“Itchy eyes,” I typed.

“It sounds like your seasonal allergies are returning,” my GHA explained.  “According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Washington, DC is the 51st most challenging place to live with spring allergies this year.  You may want to consider keeping your apartment cool, between 66 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  Close all windows to keep airborne particles out of your bedroom.  Wash your sheets with a hypoallergenic detergent at 130 degrees Fahrenheit to minimize dust mite allergens in your bedding.”

There was a slight pause, then…“I have submitted a request to your genetic counselor to re-prescribe your personalized allergy medicine.  You may need to schedule a visit with your counselor to acquire the prescription.”

The Google Health Advisor would be a remarkably useful and innovative tool if the above scenario were, in fact, true.  Yes, I admit that my Google Health Advisor is just a figment of my imagination (at least, for now it is).  All things considered, however, I believe that a more personalized world of health and medicine lies just over the horizon: a world where genetic testing, genetic counseling, and personalized medicine are all commonplace, and a world where Google will indeed diagnose and treat everyday health problems.

Why do I believe this?  Well, for starters…

• Google’s mission is to organize all of the data in the world, and we’d be kidding ourselves if we didn’t think this included the most intricate, albeit most personal, information of all: our DNA.



• Last year, Google invested $3.9 million in 23andMe, a privately held biotechnology company whose sole mission is to help us read and understand our DNA.
• A new online service called “Google Health” is already in development. As Marissa Mayer writes at the Official Google Blog, “Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful. Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online.”

At TMG, we’re studying a future that we already know.  Just look around – fundamental changes are dramatically, and irreversibly, transforming the world around us.  Study them long enough and the future will seem less mysterious and a lot more predictable.  In fact, if you read the scenario above and willingly believed you could visit Google’s homepage and communicate with your own GHA, it’s because you, too, are acutely aware of the power of Google.  And, like me, you can be sure that if the world’s most innovative company is ever granted access to our DNA, Google Health Advisor will become a reality before we know it.  The question is: do we really want it to be?