Karen DeSalvo, Google’s chief health officer and a significant force in healthcare technology and policy, is retiring this summer, according to a post on her LinkedIn last week.
During her tenure at Google, DeSalvo oversaw the tech giant’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, managed the company’s efforts to bolster access to reliable health information through search and YouTube and oversaw its expanding work on artificial intelligence.
Her last day at the company will be Aug. 1, a Google spokesperson told Healthcare Dive.
“It has been such an honor to be able to bring the full force of Google to the world of health,” DeSalvo wrote on LinkedIn. “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.”
DeSalvo joined the tech giant as its first chief health officer in 2019 after serving a stint in the federal government. She worked as acting assistant secretary for health at the HHS and national coordinator for health information technology, overseeing the office that manages the sector’s adoption of health IT, during the Obama administration.
She also previously served as a commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or MedPAC, which advises Congress on the insurance program.
Following her retirement, Michael Howell, currently chief clinical officer at Google, will take the helm of Google’s healthcare initiatives, according to a LinkedIn post. He previously worked as chief quality officer at University of Chicago Medicine.
Google won’t look for a replacement for the chief clinical officer role, but the tech giant will continue to employ a clinical team that works across the company and its products, the spokesperson said.
