RSSGoogle to launch consumer health care service later this year
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published March 5, 2008, 6:51 PM
With a pre-announcement of a health care "cloud" initiative at a medical conference last week, Google took further steps into the health care market. But some in the health care industry question Google's long-term commitment.
Over the year ahead, Google will introduce a new service called Google Health, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a keynote speech at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida.
Schmidt told doctors and other practitioners at the conference that, as a newcomer to health care services, Google plans to "partner with leaders in health care" in hopes of achieving "the right outcomes for patients." Among possible services that might he available on Google Health, he pointed to health care support groups for consumers.
Google Health is now being tested at the Cleveland Clinic, with results of initial testing expected over the next three weeks. Patients volunteering for the pilot test have agreed to transfer their medical records to online health profiles.
Meanwhile, he said, third-party software vendors in the health care field are using Google's APIs to build specialized applications.
| Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives the keynote speech at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference in Orlando, on February 28. [Courtesy Google] |
"The owner of the data has control over who accesses it," Schmidt said, in an obvious parry against any privacy concerns that might emerge over Google's plans to place health care information on the Internet. "It's the consumer's data. It isn't anyone else's data. It follows them wherever they go."
Schmidt later maintained that the information will be protected by user names and passwords. For instance, if Google Health users decide to switch doctors, they'll be able to give permission to a new doctor to get Web access to medical images taken by a previous doctor on an earlier visit.
In a Q&A session with practitioners, however, the concerns that cropped up weren't about patient rights, but about Google's commitment to health care and its intentions around monetizing its investment in a health care service.
With regard to the first of these issues, Schmidt replied that Google will only stick with the new service "if consumers like it...You'll know that right away."
Schmidt said further that, initially at least, Google will not try to monetize Google Health, drawing an analogy with Google News. Google doesn't sell ads for Google News, he said, because its users are likely to continue their searches on the ad-supported Google Web search anyway.
The CEO went so far as to contend that many health care consumers today trust the Web more so than their doctors as a source of health information. More than two-thirds of consumers who do online research about health matters "start their [research with] search engines," said Schmidt.
Google's interest in entering the health care market pre-dates last week's pre-announcement of Google Health by at least a year and a half. "Patients [need] to be able to better coordinate and manage their own health information," wrote then-Google VP Adam Bosworth in November 2006. "As the Internet increasingly helps link communities of people, we [think] there is an opportunity to connect people with similar health interests, concerns and problems. Today, people too often don't know that others like them even exist, let alone how to find them. The industry should help there, too.
"These are some of the health-related problems we're thinking through at Google," Bosworth continued. "We don't have any products or services to announce yet and may not for quite some time, but we thought we'd share a bit about the problems we're interested in helping out on even before we introduce solutions."
Bosworth had joined Google from BEA Systems, originally to head up its emerging Google Health team. He left Google in November of 2007.
It is a great idea to centralize medical records for patients provided it is an absolutely secure system. If Google really wants to help fix health care we need to do two things first. One is to live and practice health living and eating. Second, we need to get government out of health care. It can be done and the reasons are many. There is finally one book that defines health care and offers solutions. "Health Care: It Can Be Fixed"
Fritz Scheffel
www.thehealthcarefix.com
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|If all of the other Western Nations are any example you should be getting more government into health care since your primarily privately run health care system is a total mess and doesn't serve a majority of your citizens. Your system is a joke.
The USA is the ONLY Western Nation NOT to have universal health care and it is also ranked near, or at the bottom, in many areas that have to do with quality of life.
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|advertising is only one aspect, data aggregation and marketing it is the other.
in my opniion companies like google existence depends on its ability collect and aggregate data. the concern is now it wants to tap into the medical market.
"Let's see, according to the Google medical servers there is 80% increase erectile dysfunction in "sex=men", "age=40-50", "interests= sports,electronics, porn", "zip=98000-99001", etc
therefore, it would be beneficial for companies viagra to pay for more Viagra ads to Google in addition to paying Google for the data above. and who knows what else they will collect "without" the knowledge or consent of the patient. this would also be a gold mine for the insurance industry.
they always claim thats its about making things easier for the patients/consumer. but it actually about making more money, othewise there would be no interest by companies like Google.
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|???
Of course it's about money. Blue Cross, Health Partners, etc. are going to be paying Google to allow the ability to allow their patients to use the service.
Considering the epic backlash they would receive if such things as you suggest were to happen, Google would have to be criminally stupid to even consider such things.
..and while the folks at Google may be many things, I've never considered "stupid" one of them.
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|Howdy, trolls. Let me just throw in a few facts to mess up your fun little game of FUD-spewing and wild conjecture:
It's not mandatory, it's opt-in, and the user has some semblance of control over it, as opposed to now, where you really have no idea where that data is, who's looked at it, or even what it contains.
Not sure if I'd ever use such a service myself, I'm perfectly happy with my current health-care setup. But again, it's not mandatory, so that's fine.
//now back to our regularly scheduled FUD-Fest:
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|Still a bad idea and a symptom of something far worse going on. There are just some things that the private sector should never handle..... The current mess in the USA is more than enough proof this fact.
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|There are just some things that the private sector should never handle
Healthcare is exactly the opposite of one of them.
It is a personal decision, not subject to the discretion of a government entity.
The current "mess" in the USA is a perfect example of copyright and patent laws gone haywire.
Still a bad idea and a symptom of something far worse going on.
Yeah, when you going to start selling those crystal balls of yours, oh Great Swami?
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|As is more than shown in all other Western nations, when it comes to health care, that you're full of hot air. Of course they aren't perfect, but at least they aren't in the mess America is in when it comes to health care. You just let Corporate America run too many things and it is dragging you down as a nation. But then again you are a tool.
You really don't have a clue on how health care is actually run in many of these other nations, do you? In Canada, for example, the government is the insurer only, but unlike in America they don't disqualify people for pre-existing conditions or up their rates when they use their health insurance. EVERYONE is covered and everyone has a choice of who their doctor is and where they want to be treated and costs are not bankrupting anyone either. You have HMOs which take away these choices and the leading cause of bankruptcy in America are medical bills.
You'll never see this in Canada.
http://www.associatedcon...ew_trend_in_health.html
P.S.
I see that you're using the current republican lie about wanting to let families "choose" for themselves. Well, they always had choice under the current corporate run system. They got to choose whether to have food and shelter, or to have health care....
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|Ohh, so now i ll have to ****in wear an ad when im in a hospital?
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|There are already other players trying to do similar things:
http://www.healthvault.com/ - Microsoft is in on this one.
and...
http://www.indivohealth.org/ - this one has potential, and is backed by a lot of major corporations. It's a Harvard, MIT, Boston Hospital effort funded by major corps.
So, I can't help asking, if everyone has such concerns for "helping people" or whatever, why is it the Microsofts and Googles have to control the software?? Instead, why don't they join up with that Indivo project (which is Open-Source too) and help it along? Gee, I wonder. For this alone, I am more than skeptical about their true agendas (all of them).
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|Man who cares if your medical history "isn't safe" Insurers ALREADY KNOW your history. They are pretty much the only ones who care.
I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if every record was public: i.e. no privacy. Every citizen in the world: public records are known. Sounds like a lot better world than thinking we have privacy in the first place.
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|It would be for those who don't have a self, comrade.
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|I understand that Google is trying to make this sound very safe but its hard for me to imagine that. Saying that if you mis look the agreement you may find your medical info being sold to who ever wants it. There are plenty of benefits that Google will offer through this service I just don't think that it will be a big hit anytime soon.
www.talkprice.net
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|My concern would be if you started using google to search the web for any type of condition and Google says "Hey Look - we have their patient records, we can tie that to what they search and then the insurance companies know too."
Let's say that then you are denied benefits because you were looking up conditions on a cancer (whether it was for you or not), but this became a red flag for a carrier...
I know this is optional, but having Google control the data is kind of worrying about how they will tie everything you do to what they're storing.
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|I highly doubt searches would be added to your medical data. As far as I understand it, Google will host the data, but only the doctor/patient will be able to access/add anything to it.
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|I knew that providing of health care in the US was terrible, but this shows that it is far worse than I could ever imagine.
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