Shwetak Patel, the University of Washington computer scientist, has sold his latest start-up company Senosis Health to Google. Patel previously sold his ventures to the companies such as Sears and Belkin International. The purchase signifies the latest development for Google health care prospects.
Patel founded Senosis Health with four other tech transfer experts, researchers, and clinicians from the University of Washington. Patel won a MacArthur genius grant in 2011. His past innovations include air quality sensors to, energy meters, and more.
Senosis
Senosis is an ideal merger between physicians and engineers. Patel and his team aimed at turning smartphones into health monitoring devices under the startup enterprise. The monitoring devices serve to collect health metrics for diagnosing hemoglobin counts, hemoglobin counts, and other critical health info.
SpiroSmart, SpiroCall, OsteoApp, and HemaApp are the apps of the company. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was reviewing these apps earlier this year. Patel was confident since that time regarding the usage of high-end cameras, accelerometers, and even microphones of today’s smartphones as diagnostic tools for health care.
Senosis never got the chance to raise venture capital. In fact, the startup was bankrolled in its first few months. It received more than $1 million from the program named Small Business Innovation Research.
Patel and Google health care
Patel declined to comment on the said purchase. Google representatives were not available for immediate comments on the same either. Having said that, Patel was recently a guest at the Geekwire Health Tech Podcast. He spoke broadly on Senosis and his initial thoughts surrounding the initiative.
Presently, Patel will be working on solutions concerning health care challenges for Google. On the other hand, this is not the first time for Google health care in the industry. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, came up with a subsidiary named Verily in 2015. The aim of Verily was to bring technology, data science, and health care together.
What’s fascinating is that Verily’s CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Brian Otis has ties with the University of Washington. Otis worked as an associate professor in the university’s computer science and engineering department. The tenure consists of a chip design research lab founded by Otis. Furthermore, the artificial intelligence unit of Alphabet, known as DeepMind, established a health care unit in 2016.
However, Patel and his team of Senosis will not join Verily. Also, it is unsure where they come in for the greater Alphabet company. According to a source, Senosis will remain at Google, serving as the backbone of its digital health care department.
A series of build-ups led to the transaction between Google and Patel. Any detail, such as the price, is yet to be revealed. T. A. McCann, the Seattle area entrepreneur, served in raising the venture capital round, and he was appointed as the CEO of Senosis. With this, Google health care is on its way to making this world a healthier place.
