To make it easier for medical research institutions to connect with potential study participants, Google is introducing the Health Studies app, with the first study focused on respiratory illness.

Covid-19 has highlighted the importance of research in providing information about disease and treatments. However, it’s challenging for researchers to recruit enough volunteers so studies are representative of the general population.

With the app, anyone with an Android phone can take part in health studies by answering survey questions and contributing relevant data. The app provides a platform for researchers to reach a large and diverse population so they can better understand human health, while providing the public with more opportunities to contribute to medical research.

“In building the app we focused on three principles: keeping information safe, treating it responsibly and putting participants in control,” said Jon Morgan, product manager for Google Health. “When participants use the Google Health Studies app, their data are protected with Google’s advanced security. All information is encrypted and research data are stored securely.”

Google gives participants transparency and control over their personal information. For each study, participants can clearly see which data are being contributed, and when and why they are shared.

“To protect participants’ personal information, we adhere to strict privacy policies,” said Morgan. “Study data will only be used for the purposes that are explicitly consented to in the research study and will not be sold, shared with advertisers, or be used to show participants ads. The Google Health Studies app also makes it easy for participants to understand their contributions to each study, as well as access research findings when they become available.”

Google has partnered with researchers from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital for the first study, which will help scientists and public health communities better understand respiratory illnesses, including influenza and Covid-19.

This respiratory health study will be open to adults in the USA, and will focus on identifying how these types of illnesses evolve in communities and differ across risk factors such as age, and activities such as travel. Study participants will use the app to self-report regularly how they feel, what symptoms they may be experiencing, any preventative measures they’ve taken, and additional information such as Covid-19 or influenza test results.

“With Covid-19 emerging alongside seasonal respiratory pathogens, research is now needed more than ever to develop more effective treatments and mitigation strategies,” said John Brownstein, professor at Harvard Medical School and chief innovation officer of Boston Children’s Hospital. “Google Health Studies provides people with a secure and easy way to take part in medical research, while letting researchers discover novel epidemiological insights into respiratory diseases.”

In collaboration with Google Research, this first study uses federated learning and analytics, a privacy technology that keeps a person’s data stored on the device, while allowing researchers to discover aggregate insights based on encrypted, combined updates from many devices. This means researchers in this study can examine trends to understand the link between mobility – such as the number of daily trips a person makes outside the home – and the spread of Covid-19. This same approach powers typing predictions on GBoard, without Google seeing what individuals type.

The app is available in the Google Play Store and the company is inviting people to download the app to join this initial study.

“We look forward to partnering with health researchers and to making it possible for more people to participate in these important studies,” said Morgan.