More Google Health Fodder – Cleveland Hospital Starting First

The AP had a story today that told about a pilot project using a Cleveland Hospital to test out the anticipated Google Health. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

The pilot project announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google’s new service, which won’t be open to the general public.

I’ve covered Google Health a number of times on this blog and I still wonder what Eric Schmidt is going to say at HIMSS next week. I can’t imagine him not speaking about Google Health at that time. The question is how much will he actually say.

Many people are afraid of what it means for Google to have our Health information. It looks like they won’t have to comply with HIPAA requirements at all. Other people are scared that Google Health will just help Google to offer targeted Viagra (or other drug) ads.

I’m not personally as concerned as most people with Google having health information. However, it is definitely something we’ll have to watch and see how the public accepts it. The AP article described the type of content Google Health will contain:

Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that’s also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools.

Too bad most doctors don’t care about Google Health and will probably never use it.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

3 Comments

  • It will be interesting to say the least. I wonder if Google will be willing to work with an open community or if it will be keeping to its own offering. Which, it seems, is a bit opaque on standards, interoperability. I haven’t seen anyone from Google showing up in the “usual” places like HL7 meetings, the UMLS or SNOMED lists, and so on.

    Maybe they need to Google informatics.

  • I’m excited about the PHR trends with Google. A large company like Google is exactly what the industry needs to jump start this type of record keeping into the 21st Century.

  • I hear Google is using some form of CCR which is an open standard. It’s not any of those you listed, but I think CCR is better targeted for this type of data than the ones you listed. Although I will admit I’m not a total expert on that subject.

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