Google Health: Health Empowerment or Health Intrusion?

The Google Health service is clearly a work in progress, with much more polish needed. Many prominent healthcare service providers are not available on the service and will need to participate in order for the majority of Americans to be able to benefit from the service. Despite the Cleveland Clinic’s clear headstart, other hospitals and physicians will need to sign up in order to allow patients access to their records. I only stumbled upon the Google Health service by accident: Nobody has educated my staff, nor shown us how to even begin to allow Google Health access to our computer records, nor has the hospital system I use for my patients made any mention of interfacing with the service. Clearly, a considerable amount of work will need to be done before this service can work for the majority of Americans. 

Microsoft’s HealthVault has an 8-month headstart over Google in launching a similar service. In particular, HealthVault is farther ahead in partnering with hospitals, a crucial step towards a genuinely useful online health record. After all, even with current healthcare delivery models, it is the hospital record that is most helpful and details an individual’s health history, much more so than a doctor’s office records. HealthVault has clearly obtained the input of healthcare providers, with an eye towards building “data portability,” “clipboard-free admissions,” and “medication reconciliation.”  They have also just begun to incorporate unique online health information tracking tools, such as a blood sugar tracker that uploads blood sugars from the One Touch glucose monitor; body composition data from Tanita body analyzers; and heart rate records (e.g., during exercise) from Polar heart rate monitors.

This is no easy task. Despite approaching 20% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), the healthcare industry itself has not been able to coordinate a nationwide data-sharing standard that would permit such widespread, seamless sharing of health information. It is ironic that the potential solution emerges from outside of healthcare. But the simple fact that information technology giants, Google and Microsoft, have entered the ring demonstrates just how enormous (and potentially profitable) this issue has become. Will the services of these technology information experts but outsiders to healthcare provide a usable and secure solution? Will they accelerate the push towards an exclusively electronic medical record? Could it even take us a step further towards reduction in medical errors, improved quality of care, even reduced costs? My bet is that after the inevitable beginner’s fits and starts, they will.   

Read more on Google Health with Jane M. Martin's post Who's Looking at Your Medical Records?