Google Hires Dr. Jacqueline Shreibati From AliveCor

By Amit Chowdhry ● Dec 13, 2019
  • Google announced that it has hired Dr. Jacqueline Shreibati for a role in the research group at Google Health

Google has hired Jacqueline Shreibati, MD for a role in the research group at Google Health. Dr. Shreibati will be reporting to Google Chief Health Officer Dr. Karen DeSalvo. Prior to joining Google, Dr. Shreibati was the chief medical officer at AliveCor.

AliveCor is known for building wearable electrocardiogram (EKG) devices that compete against Apple’s latest Apple Watch devices. At AliveCor, Dr. Shreibati was responsible for heading up AliveCor’s medical roadmap and for developing innovative products with digital intelligence to improve health care.

Dr. Shreibati is a board-certified cardiologist. And she completed medical school, an internal medicine residency, and a cardiology fellowship all at Stanford. Plus Dr. Shreibati has a Master’s degree in health services research.

Google is also entering the health wearables market through its $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit earlier this year. By hiring Shreibati, Google could potentially help Google build on the abilities of Fitbit to become more of a research platform.

Fitbit is known for offering researchers discounts of up to 20% off the retail price of its products so Shreibati could help scale that service up. The governments in Singapore and the U.K.have commissioned Fitbit devices for diabetes health studies.

As of right now, the Fitbit deal is pending following the completion of an antitrust probe from the Justice Department. But once the deal gets approved, Google will likely integrate EKG functionality into the Fitbit in order to take market share away from the newest Apple Watch devices.

Earlier this year, Fitbit CEO James Park told Wareable why the company has not integrated an EKG function into its products yet. The two biggest reasons include FDA approval and Fitbit wants it to work different from Apple when it is launched.

“I think for us it’s making sure that it’s really clinically relevant. It’s not just about alerting people, but making sure that there’s a good next step,” said Park in the interview with Wareable earlier this year. “I’m a big fan of these technologies and early detection coming out, but if you read some of the criticisms it’s about the number of false positives, the unnecessary raising of people’s anxieties. And if you look at some of the use cases, you’re being told if you have AFib today this is not for you, or if you’re under 65 don’t really use it.”