Connect with us

Published

on

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, speaks at a cloud computing conference held by the company in 2019.

Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google Cloud on Monday announced new artificial intelligence-powered search capabilities that it said will help health-care workers quickly pull accurate clinical information from different types of medical records. 

The health-care industry is home to troves of valuable information and data, but it can be challenging for clinicians to find since it’s often stored across multiple systems and formats. Google Cloud’s new search tool will allow doctors to pull information from clinical notes, scanned documents and electronic health records so it can be accessed in one place. 

The company said the new capabilities will ultimately save health-care workers a significant amount of time and energy.

“While it should save time to be able to do that search, it should also prevent frustration on behalf of clinicians and [make] sure that they get to an answer easier,” Lisa O’Malley, senior director of product management for Cloud AI at Google Cloud told CNBC in an interview.

For instance, if doctors want to know about a patient’s history, they no longer need to read through their notes, faxes and electronic health records separately. Instead, they can search questions such as “What medications has this patient taken in the last 12 months?” and see the relevant information in one place. 

Google’s new search capabilities can also be used for other crucial applications such as applying the correct billing codes and determining whether patients meet the criteria to enroll in a clinical trial, O’Malley said.

She added that the technology can cite and link to the original source of the information, which will come directly from an organization’s own internal data. This should help alleviate clinicians’ concerns that the AI might be hallucinating, or generating inaccurate responses. 

Google Cloud headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

Google Cloud

The search features will be especially valuable to health-care workers who are already burdened with staffing shortages and daunting amounts of clerical paperwork. 

A study funded by the American Medical Association in 2016 found that for every hour a physician spent with a patient, they spent an additional two hours on administrative work. The study said physicians also tend to spend an additional one to two hours doing clerical work outside of working hours, which many in the industry refer to as “pajama time.”

In 2022, 53% of physicians reported that they were feeling burned out, up from 42% in 2018, according to a January survey from Medscape.

Google hopes its new search offerings will reduce the amount of time clinicians need to spend digging through additional records and databases.

“Anything that Google can do by applying our search technologies, our health-care technologies and research capabilities to make the journey of the clinicians and health-care providers and payers more quick, more efficient, saving them cost, I think ultimately benefits us as patients,” O’Malley said.  

The new features will be offered to health and life sciences organizations through Google’s Vertex AI Search platform, which companies in other industries can already use to conduct searches across public websites, documents and other databases. The specific offering for health care builds on Google’s existing Healthcare API and Healthcare Data Engine products

Aashima Gupta, global director of health care strategy and solutions at Google Cloud, said the new Vertex AI Search capabilities can integrate directly into a clinician’s workflow, which is of high importance for customers in the field. 

The health-care industry has historically been more hesitant to embrace new technology, and adoption can be even harder if health-care workers find new solutions distracting or hard to work with. It’s something Gupta said Google has been paying close attention to. 

“These are the workflows that the physicians and nurses live by day in and day out. You can’t be adding friction to it,” Gupta told CNBC in an interview. “We are very cautious of that — that we are respecting the surface they use, that the workflow doesn’t change, but yet they get the power of this technology.”

Customers can sign up for early access to Vertex AI Search for health care and life sciences starting Monday, but Google Cloud has already been testing the capabilities with health organizations such as Mayo Clinic, Hackensack Meridian Health and Highmark Health.

Mayo Clinic is not using the new Vertex AI Search tools in clinical care yet, said Cris Ross, Mayo’s chief information officer; it is starting with administrative use cases. 

“We are curious, we’re enthusiastic, we’re also careful,” he told CNBC in an interview. “And we’re not going to put anything into patient care until it’s really ready to be in patient care.”

Down the line, Ross said, Mayo Clinic is looking to explore how Vertex AI Search tools could be used to help nurses summarize long surgical notes, sort through patients’ complex medical histories, and easily answer questions such as “What is the smoking status of this patient?” But for now, the organization is starting slow and examining where AI solutions like Google’s will be the most useful.

Richard Clarke, chief analytics officer at Highmark Health, said the initial reaction to the search tools at the organization has been “tremendous” and the company already has a backlog of more than 200 use-case ideas. But similar to Mayo Clinic, he said the challenge will be prioritizing where the technology can be most useful, building employees’ trust in it and deploying it at scale.

“This is still very early days, deployed with small teams with lots of support, really thinking about this,” Clarke told CNBC in an interview.  “We haven’t gone big and wide yet, but all early signs say that this is going to be tremendously useful, and frankly, in many cases, transformational for us.”

Google Cloud does not access customer data or use it to train models, and the company said the new service is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

Gupta said that as a patient, interacting with the health-care system can feel like a very fragmented and challenging experience, so she is excited to see how clinicians can ultimately leverage Google’s new tools to create a fuller picture. 

“To me, connecting the dots from the patient perspective has long been health care’s journey, but it’s hard,” Gupta said. “Now, we are at a point where AI is being helpful in these very practical use cases.” 

Continue Reading

Technology

Intel issues weak guidance, says it will slash expenses this year

Published

on

By

Intel issues weak guidance, says it will slash expenses this year

The Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Intel Corp. is scheduled to release earnings figures on April 24.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Intel reported first-quarter results on Thursday that beat analysts’ estimates, while issuing disappointing guidance and announcing plans to slash operational and capital expenses in the coming year, the first under CEO Lip-Bu Tan. The stock fell 7% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did, versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • EPS: 13 cents, adjusted vs. 1 cent estimated
  • Revenue: $12.67 billion vs. $12.3 billion estimated

Intel said it expects revenue for the current quarter of $11.8 billion dollars at the midpoint of the range, lower than the average analyst estimate of $12.82 billion. The company said earnings will be breakeven, while analysts were looking for profit of 6 cents per share.

Intel said its second-quarter guidance reflected elevated uncertainty driven by the macro environment.

For the first quarter, Intel reported a net loss of $800 million, or 19 cents per share, due to higher costs of sales and some writedowns. That compares with net income of $2.7 billion, or 63 cents per share, last year.

It’s the chipmaker’s first earnings report since Tan over as CEO in March, after Pat Gelsinger stepped down in December under pressure from board members and investors. Gelsinger’s tenure was highlighted by the company’s inability to effectively compete in artificial intelligence and its efforts to move into semiconductor manufacturing for other companies, including competitors.

“The first quarter was a step in the right direction, but there are no quick fixes as we work to get back on a path to gaining market share and driving sustainable growth,” Tan said in a statement.

Intel said on Thursday that it was planning to cut operational and capital expenses, removing management layers, in order to become more efficient. The company said it expected $17 billion in operational expenses this year, down from a previous target of $17.5 billion, and that it would target $18 billion in capital expenses in 2025, down from a previous target of $20 billion.

Intel said it hasn’t included restructuring charges in its guidance. Finance chief David Zinsner told CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos that the reduction in operating expenses would include job cuts, especially for managers, but that Intel has not yet finalized a number of cuts.

“There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce,” Tan said in a memo to employees that was published by Intel on its website. He said that the cuts would begin this quarter.

Intel’s investors hope Tan can turn around a company that’s been losing market share in its core processor business, and doesn’t have a competitive AI chip to Nvidia, which dominates the fast-growing sector.

Tan has already started to shape his team, last week naming networking chief Sachin Katti to be the company’s chief technology officer and head of AI, leading Intel’s overall AI strategy and product release plans. Tan said on Thursday in a memo that Intel employees would have to work four days per week in the office by September.

Intel’s data center group reported $4.1 billion in sales, which was up 8% year-over-year. Intel said it had merged its networking and edge computing group, previously led by Katti, into its data center organization.

The company’s other big business, chips for PCs, is reported under the Client Computing Group, and it fell 8% on an annual basis to $7.6 billion in sales.

Intel’s burgeoning foundry business reported $4.7 billion in revenue, although most of those sales come from Intel’s other divisions to manufacture its chips.

Continue Reading

Technology

Meta lays off employees working on virtual reality in Reality Labs division

Published

on

By

Meta lays off employees working on virtual reality in Reality Labs division

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters


Meta has laid off employees in its Reality Labs division that is tasked with developing virtual reality, augmented reality and related wearable devices.

The cuts affected an unspecified number of employees working in the division’s Oculus Studios unit, which develops VR and AR games and content for Meta’s Quest VR headsets, a company spokesperson told CNBC.

“Some teams within Oculus Studios are undergoing shifts in structure and roles that have impacted team size,” the spokesperson said. “These changes are meant to help Studios work more efficiently on future mixed reality experiences for our growing audience, while still delivering great content for people today.”

Employees working on the Supernatural VR workout app were impacted, the spokesperson said.

“We’re deeply saddened to share that these changes have resulted in the loss of some of our incredibly talented team members,” the company said in a statement posted to the Supernatural official Facebook group. “Their contributions have been instrumental in shaping our journey and yours, and their absence will be deeply felt.”

The cuts to Reality Labs come after Meta in February laid off 5% of its overall workforce that it deemed to be its lowest performers.

Meta’s Reality Labs division logged an operating loss of $4.97 billion while scoring $1.1 billion in sales during the fourth quarter, the company said in January.

The social media company reports earnings on Wednesday.

The Verge reported the layoffs earlier on Thursday.

WATCH: Mark Zuckerberg takes witness stand on first day of antitrust trial.

Mark Zuckerberg takes witness stand on first day of antitrust trial

Continue Reading

Technology

Alphabet to report Q1 earnings results after the bell

Published

on

By

Alphabet to report Q1 earnings results after the bell

Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, is set to report first-quarter earnings after the bell Thursday.

Here’s what analysts are expecting.

  • Revenue: $89.12 billion, according to LSEG
  • Earnings per share: $2.01, according to LSEG
  • YouTube advertising revenue: $8.97 billion, according to StreetAccount
  • Google Cloud revenue: $12.27 billion, according to StreetAccount
  • Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $13.66 billion, according to StreetAccount

Google finds itself at the center of an artificial intelligence arms race where its position may be threatened pending mounting regulation and competition from generative AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic. The company is also among those bracing for the potential impact from President Donald Trump‘s tariffs, which could result in a pullback in advertiser spending due to tighter budgets.

Alphabet shares have dropped more than 17% in 2025 so far.

Wall Street is expecting Alphabet to report 10% year-over-year revenue growth for the first quarter, which included a slew of AI announcements, its largest-ever acquisition, cost cuts and regulatory hurdles.

In March, Google released Gemini 2.5, its “most capable” artificial intelligence model suite yet, and Gemma 3, the company’s latest open model. The timing of Gemini 2.5 and Gemma 3 comes after DeepSeek in January released its R1 model, which caused a rift in Silicon Valley after the Chinese startup claimed its AI model was trained at a fraction of the cost of other leading models.

Google AI chief Demis Hassabis told employees at an all-hands meeting in February that he was not worried about DeepSeek and that Google has superior AI technology.

“We’re very calm and confident in our strategy, and we have all the ingredients to maintain our leadership into this year,” Hassabis said, calming concerns from investors and employees alike. He added, however, he thinks the Chinese company is still “something to be taken seriously.”

Google this quarter also announced new personalization features for Gemini, allowing the chatbot to reference users’ search histories, and users can also connect Gemini to other Google apps, including Calendar, Notes, Tasks and Photos.

During the quarter, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced it would be partnering with Google’s Gemini products, giving the company high praise.

“No company is better at every single layer of computing than Google and Google Cloud,” Huang said.

Alphabet also had a number of announcements in autonomous driving.

In March, Waymo began offering robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, through the Uber app and opened up a waitlist in Atlanta. Those markets are just two of several more expected expansions in the U.S. this year.

Alphabet also made its largest acquisition ever in March when it agreed to buy Wiz for $32 billion in cash, almost $10 billion more than it offered for the startup in 2024, and said it expects the deal to close next year, subject to regulatory approvals. With the acquisition, Google will seek to bolster its cloud division’s security offerings. Google is behind Amazon and Microsoft in cloud market share, which may help the company’s argument to obtain regulatory approval.

Google this quarter also faced a slew of regulatory and legal challenges.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to its position between ad buyers and sellers. The ruling represents a second major antitrust blow for Google. Last August, a judge determined the company has held a monopoly in its core market of internet search.

In April, the company reached a settlement with its employee union, where it agreed to reverse a policy forbidding employees from discussing antitrust litigation. The settlement, which marked a major victory for Google staffers, came ahead of Google’s remedy trial, which will determine the consequences of the search monopoly ruling over the next few weeks.

Education tech company Chegg in February filed a lawsuit against Google. Chegg claimed that Google’s “AI summaries” feature in search have hurt the online education company’s traffic and revenue. Similarly, Reddit in February claimed that Google’s search algorithm caused some “volatility” with user growth in the fourth quarter, but the company’s search-related traffic has since recovered, CEO Steve Huffman said.

WATCH: DOJ targets Google’s AI ambitions in high-stakes antitrust trial

Continue Reading

Trending