Google has been working for years with the Mayo Clinic, the leading hospital in the United States. But today, the company announced a move to make the partnership a little more serious: Google will open an office in Rochester MN this year, home of the Mayo Clinic headquarters. Google already has dozens of offices in the US, but this will be the first in Minneapolis. The company has partnered with the Mayo Clinic to find spaces that enable them to easily collaborate with Mayo Clinic staff while ‘transforming patient care’.
The announcement of a new office during the COVID-19 pandemic may seem a bit unusual at first glance, as companies and employees are taking away work more than ever before. Google acknowledges that they will wait to open completely until later this year and will wait until the state and local COVID-19 guidelines say it is safe to do so.
It’s not clear what Google’s going to do with the Mayo Clinic in the new location, but it’s probably just a way to collaborate more effectively on the kinds of projects they’ve already done. In the past approximately 18 months, Google has said that data from the Mayo Clinic is being transferred to the cloud and is working on projects such as the use of AI to help doctors develop radiotherapy plans. The Mayo Clinic also worked with Google on the response to COVID-19, but exactly what the two organizations did together was not made clear.
While a new office is not the most exciting news to hear from Google, it does show that the company continues to take healthcare seriously, something it has in common with some of the other technology giants. Apple has focused health with its Apple Watch hardware and Amazon has been working on a variety of healthcare initiatives and partnerships over the past few years, not all of which have been successful.