Google has acquired Senosis Health, a health monitoring start-up as per the recent reports. The Seattle based startup is founded by an Indian-origin Professor Shwetak Patel, who is a professor at the University of Washington.
Patel founded Senosis Health with four other clinicians, researchers and tech transfer experts from the University of Washington. The app they had developed turns smartphones into medical devices and collects various health stats.
According to Geekwire that first reported the acquisition, this latest acquisition from Google is big for Patel. Since his past start-up ventures have also been landed in companies like Belkin International and Sears.
Patel is a professor at University of Washington’s computer science and engineering faculty. According to his biography at University website, he had founded Zensi, Inc., a demand side energy monitoring solutions provider, which was acquired by Belkin, Inc in 2010. Also, he invented a consumer home sensing product called WallyHome and it was acquired by Sears in 2015.
What exactly is Senosis Health?
Senosis Health is an app that takes smartphones and turns them into health monitoring devices. The app uses various sensors and functions on a smartphone including its accelerometer, microphone, flash, and camera.
The app can monitor and diagnose pulmonary function, hemoglobin counts, lung health and so on. For example, to measure the hemoglobin counts, the app uses phone’s flash to illuminate a user’s finger.
“Those sensors that are already on the mobile phone can be repurposed in interesting new ways, where you can actually use those for diagnosing certain kinds of diseases,” Patel said.
The acquisition of Senosis represents Google’s interest in innovative start-ups. To recall, last month it had acquired a Bangalore-based AI Startup Halli Labs. Now, with Senosis Health, Google has indicated its interest in the digital health arena.
Even if the latest report is supposed to be true, it is still unclear what Google has planned for this Health care startup. However, it is noteworthy that the company had expressed their interest in the medical field before with Google Fit.