Healthcare is an increasingly alluring market for some of the technology’s biggest players, but the industry has some significant strings attached that may keep many innovators at a distance – even ones as large as Google (NSDQ:GOOG).
In a talk with Khosla Ventures, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said that the regulatory barriers inherent in U.S. healthcare are a huge turn-off, even though they’re both interested in how technology could improve patient care.
"Health is just so heavily regulated, it’s just a painful business to be in. It’s just not necessarily how I want to spend my time," Brin said. "I think the regulatory burden in the U.S. is so high that it would dissuade a lot of entrepreneurs."
Those barriers haven’t entirely kept Google from dabbling in the healthcare arena. The company recently unveiled blood glucose monitoring contact lenses and Google also supports the Calico project for extending human longevity. The company also dabbled in electronic medical records and has added some health and fitness tracking to new versions of its mobile operating systems. The company’s Google Glass wearable, though not necessarily designed for healthcare, has made some significant inroads with hospitals for helping physicians gain access to data and for aiding in training.
Yet Brin and Page both lamented the heavy regulatory burden that comes along with innovating in the healthcare space, naming HIPAA in particular as a deterrent.
"Imagine you had the ability to search people’s medical records in the U.S.," Page said by way of example. "Maybe when the medical researcher searches your data, you get to see which researcher searched it and why. I imagine that would save 10,000 lives in the 1st year. Just that. That’s almost impossible to do because of HIPAA."
"I do worry that we regulate ourselves out of some really great possibilities that are certainly on the data-mining end," Page added.