In this Sunday’s HUH? news we have a report by Healthcare IT news that Google may be considering using their Google Wave technology for EHR. Of course, I think the writer at Healthcare IT news must have had a deadline or something since the paper written by Google engineers Shirley Gaw and Umesh Shankar about representing “Individual Health Records” that are aggregating from “multiple sources” which sounds a lot more like a PHR to me than an EHR

That minor verbiage aside, it’s hard for me to imagine Google Wave used as a PHR or an EHR. Ok, I get the idea that it would be interesting to see all the clinical data elements added to a patients history in real time (basically what Google Wave does). This is an innovation that is needed. I just think that re-architecting the very consumer focused Google Wave product isn’t going to get us there.

Not to mention, Google has chosen to stop supporting Google Wave. I think Google probably has enough to do with health with Google Health. I’ll be very surprised if we really see the Google Wave technology used in healthcare.