Karen DeSalvo, M.D., whose career has spanned medicine, public health and leadership roles in healthcare policy and health tech, plans to retire this summer.
DeSalvo, who joined Google Health as its first chief health officer in 2019, announced her retirement in a LinkedIn post Friday.
“It has been such an honor to be able to bring the full force of Google to the world of health. There is no other place to do that at the scale we can than at Google where hundreds of millions come to us everyday in their most critical moments for information, insights and help along their health journey. It is a gift for helping people at a scale unimaginable as a brand new doctor in 1992,” DeSalvo wrote in the post.
During DeSalvo’s tenure at Google Health, the tech giant significantly expanded its work in healthcare. She led Google Health initiatives to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, research through Google Health Studies as well as advances with devices, artificial intelligence and data.
Google Health’s portfolio of products, services and platforms now include Fitbit, which Google bought in 2021, Pixel and healthcare-related initiatives across YouTube and Google Search. Google Health also launched Health Connect to integrate individuals’ health, fitness and wellness data on Android from across apps.
As artificial intelligence evolves, Google Health has focused on developing cutting-edge AI capabilities to enhance care, support clinicians and accelerate scientific breakthroughs. A few of the company’s initiatives in healthcare AI include working with clinicians and partners to improve breast cancer screening with AI, using AI to improve the accuracy of genomic analysis, ongoing work on generative AI tools for healthcare and advancing work with Google Research’s Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer (AMIE), a research conversational diagnostic medical AI system.
In her LinkedIn post, DeSalvo tapped Michael Howell, M.D. currently Google Health’s chief clinical officer, to step into the chief health officer role. “He is the perfect person to take on the mantle in the next chapter of Google’s cross company mission to harness our tools and technology to help everyone, everywhere live a longer, healthier life,” she wrote.
A seasoned public health leader, DeSalvo worked on the health response in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She was Vice Dean for Community Affairs and Health Policy and Chief of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at the Tulane University School of Medicine. While at Tulane, she envisioned and led the effort to create the innovative model of neighborhood-based primary care and mental health services for low income, uninsured and other vulnerable populations in the New Orleans area following Hurricane Katrina.
She then served as New Orleans Health Commissioner and New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu’s Senior Health Policy Advisor from 2011 to 2014.
In 2014, former President Barack Obama tapped DeSalvo to serve as acting assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She also served as the national coordinator for health IT from 2014 to 2016, where she set national strategy and policy on health IT.
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