Indian American Bakul Patel To Head Google’s Global Digital Health Strategy

Google brings in former US FDA leader Bakul Patel as Digital Health Chief

Former FDA regulator Bakul Patel will join Google Health as its new Senior Director of Global Digital Health Strategy and Regulatory.  

(Photo: LinkedIn)

Bakul Patel, a former Indian American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) leader will join forces with technology behemoth Google as its new senior director of global digital health strategy and regulatory.

Having spent more than a decade at the FDA, Patel was most recently the chief digital health officer of global strategy and innovation at the regulatory agency.

"As a 'technology person' first, (before becoming a policy wonk @FDA), working on leading-edge solutions has been a key focus throughout my career," Patel wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

He plans to tap into this tech-first mindset to guide his efforts at Google in order to build a unified digital health and regulatory strategy.

Indian American CEO Sundar Pichai has himself pushed Google deeper into health and healthcare--from mining big data for algorithms to creating disease-detecting tools to building wearables that give extensive health features.

"Throughout my tenure at FDA, my biggest northstar has been to make digital healthcare accessible and equitable for all."

Bakul Patel, wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

Prior to working with the FDA, Patel held leadership roles in the telecommunications industry, wireless sector, information technology industry, and semiconductor capital equipment industry.

His experience covers creating long and short-term strategy, influencing organizational change, modernizing government systems, and delivering high technology products and services in a fast-paced technology intensive companies.

Patel has earned an MS in Electronic Systems Engineering from the University of Regina, Canada, and an MBA in International Business from the Johns Hopkins University.