The logo of Google is displayed on a carpet at the entrance hall of Google France in Paris, on Nov. 18, 2019. Google said Friday, jan. 20, 2023, it’s laying off 12,000 workers, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff after rapid expansions during the COVID-19 pandemic have worn off. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
At its annual health event on Tuesday, Google announced a series of changes to its search tool that it said will make it easier to access information about affordable health care services.
For example, the company will move affordable local health care options to the top of its search queries. It will also use a conversational artificial intelligence technology called Duplex to verify information from providers and check whether they accept state Medicaid plans.
"People come to Google with health-related questions hundreds of millions of times a day," the company said in a press release. "They also turn to YouTube, where videos about health conditions were viewed more than 110 billion times globally in 2021."
In the near term, Google will also make it easier for users to find information through search about Medicaid re-enrollment, which is due by the end of March.
The other big announcement from the event was the launch of Open Health Stack, an open-source tool kit for software developers in the health care space. The goal is for developers to create new apps making it easier for health care workers to access patient information.
"Digital health solutions built to date have focused on solving for single, disease-focused conditions, leading to data silos and making it difficult for healthcare workers to access the patient information they need," the company said.
The Open Health Stack is designed to help developers break out of these silos and share best practices.
Finally, the tech giant said it is developing a model for automatically outlining and contouring organs on CT scans, while limiting exposure to radiation.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
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