Health Technology Group, a relatively new health tech division at the Menlo Park giant is bolstering up its talent by hiring clinical research personnel.
The Health Technology group at Facebook is currently seeking a clinical researcher to lead a world-class team developing and executing projects aimed at improving morbidity, mortality, cost, and inequity in health outcomes.
According to the job posting, leaders in this role are expected to be recognized experts in feasibility and validation research, particularly in relation to digital endpoints, with a demonstrated ability to effectively communicate to non-clinical teams.
The ideal candidate will have a keen interest in managing efforts to produce new science and technology by contributing their management and research expertise to the developing Health Technology work at Facebook.
The new Clinical Research manager will guide clinical research throughout the development lifecycle from early-stage generative research, through validation and post-launch measurement.
Recent developments suggest that Facebook might be working on a smartwatch-type product but it is geared more towards communication use cases as opposed to any serious health tracking features.
The vast amount of human-computer interface design work being done today at Facebook is being run at Facebook Reality Labs (FRL).
The FRL team has been developing technologies needed to enable breakthrough AR glasses and VR headsets, including optics and displays, computer vision, audio, graphics, brain-computer interface, haptic interaction, eye/hand/face/body tracking, perception science, and true telepresence.
This division at Facebook is also hiring general counsel to help with regulatory issues surrounding medical device.
The requirements for associate general counsel, Facebook Reality Labs show:
“Providing product teams with legal advice across many subject areas, such as regulatory compliance for emerging consumer devices, privacy, digital health and medical device issues, telecommunications, device apps and terms of service, IP, data protection laws, and other global legal frameworks”.
The company had taken some initial steps in 2019 to position itself in the healthcare space. Freddy Anouusi, MD, Head of Healthcare Research at Facebook was instrumental in rolling out the company’s features that were aimed at helping people connect with resources to support health.
It is unclear at this time whether Facebook is working on a specific type of consumer health-related device but most signs and rumors suggest that any medical features to come would probably be integrated into its AR/VR offering in the future via work being done by Facebook Reality Labs team.
