On Wednesday, Google revealed that it is releasing a new Android phone study app, which will allow anyone with a smartphone to engage in medical studies. The first research conducted by the app would look at infectious conditions such as the flu and COVID-19, dubbed Google Health Tests.
Research participants can use the software to monitor any respiratory problems, the steps they take to avoid infection, and whether COVID-19 or the flu has been tested. The app can gather demographic information such as age, gender and race as well. "In this study researchers can examine trends to understand the connection between mobility (such as the number of daily trips a person makes outside the home) and COVID-19 spread," Google wrote in a press release.
Using a strategy called federated learning, the software will send data to analysts, who will batch aggregate patterns from several computers, rather than pull data independently from each participant.
Health Studies is a response from Google to the Study app from Apple, which runs on iOS smartphones. It launched menstrual cycle research, mobility and cardiac wellbeing, and hearing studies last year. Via its ResearchKit software, Apple also lets researchers create their own iPhone applications.
The same caveats as experiments from other commercial wearable devices would arrive with studies going through the app: they will only enrol individuals who can afford products such as an Android phone. Aggregated data is a safe way to protect anonymity, but it ensures that analysts can't look at information in a granular way.
Users of Android phones have a lower median income than users of iPhones, which may be a benefit of Google Health Reports. "The Android dataset is potentially more diverse than the [iPhone] dataset. John Brownstein, a chief innovation officer at the Boston Children's Hospital partnering with Google on the report, told Stat News that we are very optimistic about the opportunity to leverage that.
