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Google I/O is the company’s annual tech conference held in San Francisco, California. It’s happening right now. We cut through the tech-speak and explain why you need to know about it.

What is Google I/O?
It’s an annual software developer-focused conference held by Google in San Francisco, California. It’s where Google introduces it’s new tech, and as we all know, digital health is big right now, so expect some healthcare-related announcements in the mix.

Who’s it for?
Developers mainly, but because developers need to know about new products, and developments in technology, so they can write software for them, it can be a good way of discovering what’s coming up before official public release.

How’s this relevant to digital health?
Google are increasingly getting involved in digital health, from wearables and smartphone apps, to artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, this technology all built and used by the tech community, and so they need to make announcements about it at events like this before it reaches the public. 

What can we expect this year?
Looking at the programme there’s wide range of techie stuff, but there are going to be  announcements about developments in big data mining, machine learning, and the Google Wear platform. These are likely to give us clues to Google digital health aspirations.

Should I go?
Probably not, unless you’re a developer with a conference budget. In 2014, a few members of the Fusion dev team attended Google I/O and received pre-release smart watches from Samsung. The smartwatches weren’t very impressive back then, so they all got sold on eBay for more than their eventual retail price. Not enough to pay for the trip to San Fransisco though.

This post also appears on mPharma, the mobile-first information platform for pharmaceutical executives.