[9] Starting on May 20, 2008, Google Health was released to the general public as a service in beta test stage.

[16] In 2019, it was announced they wanted more searchable medical records and to "improve the quality of health-focused search results across Google and YouTube".

[20][21] The project was headed by David Feinberg, hired in November 2018 and his oversight included Google Fit, health-oriented features in Google Search, G Suite for healthcare businesses, AI-based health research offerings, and Alphabet subsidiaries DeepMind Health, Verily, and Calico.

[36][non-primary source needed] The two companies aim to use their technology capabilities for TeleHealthcare including artificial intelligence and collaboration tools.

Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo noted that privacy concerns had led to the approach using Bluetooth-based proximity signals rather than GPS location tracking.

In South Korea, authorities using cellphone location data had identified 60,000 people near a mass-exposure event in Itaewon.

[42] Google deployed federated learning in an effort to improve privacy and security in its Health Studies app.

"[49] Google filed in 2007, U.S. Patent Application #20070282632, "Method and apparatus for serving advertisements in an electronic medical record system".

[51][non-primary source needed] In January 2010, the Withings WiFi Body scale enables Google Health users to seamlessly update their weight and other data to their online profiles.

MediConnect Global was one such partner; for a fee, they would retrieve a user's medical records from around the world and add them to his or her profile.

[53][non-primary source needed] The original Google Health was an opt-in service, meaning it could only access medical information volunteered by individuals.

DeepMind acquired a task management app called Hark developed by Dominic King and Lord Ara Darzi at Imperial College.

[59] In June 2019, University of Chicago, its medical center, and Google were sued in a potential class-action lawsuit about patient record sharing.

[60] The class action suit had been filed by plaintiff Matt Dinerstein and represented by attorney Jay Edelson.

[61][62] The University noted that class action attorney Edelson had a potential conflict of interest, as an investor in a competing company, Quant HC.

[63] Quant HC, produced medical software called ECART, and received $600,000 of initial investment from Edelson and his wife from its founding in 2012.

[64][65] In 2018, Project Nightingale started the partnership with Ascension, one of the largest United States health care systems.

[66][67] In November 2019, Google engineers were reported to have had access to medical records held by Ascension as they were building products and as a result, the US government opened up an investigation on the partnership.

"[72] For example, IQVIA, a large pharmaceutical research and marketing conglomerate noted that they have data on over 600 million patients in their public 10-K financial filings.

[74] Google executive Tariq Shaukat wrote in an official statement that the data would be used in extending tools to doctors and nurses to improve care, writing: "We aim to provide tools that Ascension could use to support improvements in clinical quality and patient safety.

The stated commitment by Google to not combine data stood in contrast to the health records activities by Facebook.

The secretive Facebook "Building 8" project, led by cardiologist Freddy Abnousi, sought to "combine what a health system knows about its patients (such as: person has heart disease, is age 50, takes 2 medications and made 3 trips to the hospital this year) with what Facebook knows (such as: user is age 50, married with 3 kids, English isn't a primary language, actively engages with the community by sending a lot of messages).

[87] In November 2019, Microsoft HealthVault was shut down and it was suggested users migrate their records to Get Real Health and FollowMyHealth.