Fitbit
Fitbit Inc. plans to move its platform to Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud as it steps up efforts to integrate into the broader health ecosystem.
Through the arrangement, announced Monday, Fitbit will make use of Alphabet Inc.’s health-focused application, and employees from the two companies will work together on interactions with health systems, Fitbit said. The company expects that the move will enable it to more easily interface with electronic medical-records software and leverage artificial intelligence to help spot patterns in health data.
Ease of integration with existing systems and the ability to scale are “the types of things that future customers would look at and do look at,” Adam Pellegrini, the head of Fitbit’s health solutions business, told MarketWatch ahead of the official announcement. “When you add on the machine-learning aspect, then absolutely people will look at this as a smart system that can scale and leverage the Fitbit brand.”
Fitbit is in the midst of a transition as it shifts its business model from one focused on device sales to one that brings in recurring streams of revenue. The company has been working with health-industry players like UnitedHealthcare, part of UnitedHealth Group Inc. to integrate its devices into health plans, so that participants can get financial rewards from their insurer for meeting exercise goals. The idea is that insurers will find it worthwhile to compensate customers for measuring and meeting fitness objectives so that they stay healthier and better avoid costly health problems.
Fitbit’s chief executive James Park recently told MarketWatch that the company now wants to go beyond merely tracking steps. The company bought coaching platform Twine Health earlier this year, which is the platform Fitbit plans to move to the cloud. Fitbit hopes that ultimately it can take the data it accumulates, detect patterns, and suggest to users specific behavioral changes, a suite of services that health-care companies might be willing to pay for.
“We can use Google’s artificial intelligence and machine learning to give someone’s care team better insights and better predictive, proactive recommendations,” Pellegrini said.
Google is competing with Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure for corporate cloud-computing customers. Google parent Alphabet disclosed in February that Google Cloud had surpassed $1 billion in quarterly revenue; AWS reported quarterly revenue of $5.5 billion last week and is believed to be the largest of the cloud competitors, while Microsoft said Azure grew by 93% year-over-year in its most recent quarter.
Fitbit shares are down 11% in the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 index has gained 12%.