In a post about Google’s product plans a couple of days ago, I noted a recent blog entry by Google VP Adam Bosworth that implied Google will attempt to create a system that individuals could use to store all their health and medical information. “We believe that patients should control and own their own health information, and should be able to do so easily,” he wrote. “We believe our industry should help solve this problem.” In a speech today at a health conference, Bosworth provided more clues about what Google has in mind.
Bosworth begins by calling attention to an area where, he says, “innovation is badly needed”:
There is no place individuals can go to get a comprehensive set of health and medical information about themselves. Access to this comprehensive information can be vital to proper and timely diagnosis of the patient, to the patient getting the best possible treatment, and, perhaps sometimes overlooked, to the patient getting the best possible ongoing care and support after the initial treatment, especially for chronic illnesses … We should not accept this. We should not accept that the institutional barriers of the system cause tens of thousands to die unnecessarily and hundreds of thousands at the very least to suffer without cause while we pay an enormous bill.
So “what can be done?” Bosworth asks. He then sketches out the Google solution, which includes the creation of a “health URL” for every patient:
Let’s put the patients in charge of their health and medical information. Let’s build a system which puts the people who are sick in control. For every single medical and health-related event, let’s make sure that patients can effortlessly retrieve and share their information in its totality and then use it to ensure that they get the best quality of care possible. It is their health. The people who treat, diagnose, test or dispense medications to patients should be required to deliver, instantly, over the net, at the speed of light, that information to those patients to use as they see fit. If these patients choose to share it with caregivers or health coaches or nursing services, that should be their right …
Every ill person needs a “health URL,” an online meeting place where their caregivers — with express permission from the ill person — can come together, pass on notes to each other, review each other’s notes, look at the medical data, and suggest courses of action. This isn’t rocket science. It is online web applications 101.
Google, he says in closing, has been exploring this type of system for the last year, and “we are confident that increased and more targeted use of technology will help improve healthcare for all.”
“Google loves to bite off problems that are extremely hard to chew,” John Battelle wrote about Bosworth’s earlier post, “but this one might prove undigestable for all sorts of reasons.” If anything, that’s an understatement. Then again, if any one company has the ability to get this ball rolling, it’s probably Google. Where it will roll to is anyone’s guess.
A big bite indeed. Maybe the only data more private than financial data, and an area laden with state and federal regulations (HIPAA, etc. etc.).
I wonder if they need a different brand for this. This is definitely not how I currently think about google.
John
Maybe I’m too old but Google and private health data sounds really strange.
I found no cartoon.
Bye,
Oliver
Do I really want Google ads that exploit my medical history? I think not. Just look at the ads to the right in this post.
This is a good sign that Google has now grown to a size where it can no longer be nimble and cutting edge. Perhaps they are already morphing into the next Microsoft.
Does Google really think Personal Health Records (PHR) is some brilliant discovery they just made? Hordes of policy-makers, academics, and actual cutting-edge entrepreneurs have been working on this problem for at least the past 2 years. SOME of those people are doing real research aimed at crafting a solution that isn’t imposed from the top down. Google isn’t among them.
I suspect Google will end up buying in a solution created by a smaller, leaner, highly focused organization that has been deeply immersed in PHR for a long time.
Marianc,
Where have you seen that Google is top-down? Not listening to the focused organizations for insights?
In any of their product, they have left many privacy options open — and the quotes here prove once again that they want to empower the user. Ads would be a terrible thing in such a service — I strongly oppose BigPharma influence on patients or doctors beyond actual information — but many Google services are ad-free! I use Scholar search a lot, the most similar service in term of who is using it and I can’t imagine having as in their too. Even if their are not, those are now easy to filter for a relatively tech-savvy population.
About insights, the relevant speakers seam to have given lectures in Mountain View: check “EngEdu” in Google Video.
The Health 2.0 movement has been alive and well for quite a while now and several new entrepreneurial companies are working hard to help put consumers back in control of their health. Google Health has been a mystery for some time now and while they are talking about it (which we think is a good thing because it brings even more attention this sector) we’ve seen MedBillManager.com test its beta, DailyStrength.com launch and our own OrganizedWisdom.com (http://www.OrganizedWisdom.com) where every member already gets their own personal “health link”. Of course these are not full Health Medical Records yet. Mine is organizedwisdom.com/ustoakes as an example. These are early days for us all to be certain; from our perspective we are excited to see Google validating the trend and so many great entrepreneurs testing new solutions.
The technology behind this initiative is trivial. What is needed is exposure and trust.
There are currently only two types of entities that exist in our society that are capable of fostering enough attention to make a system like this work effectively – the government and mega-corps.
The former, in my opinion, has never demonstrated that it is able to, ahem, connect the dots, and deliver on a tech/web driven project of this type. However, they do – if not unwittingly – have our trust.
Unfortunately, despite my faith that the latter – Google in this case – would deliver a simple, fast, effective solution, we are still concerned about trusting them with such sensitive personal information.
Following off Nick’s previous post about the latest Google/Sky partnership, I would personally love to see companies like Google form partnerships with the government in order to provide an effective solution that we can all trust: Google handles the backend and the government runs the front.
Just wanted to mention our patient activist and physician oriented Health Search startup “CureHunter“. One of our main design goals is to bring patients and physicians closer to the research so they can make the most educated decisions possible and truly begin to practice Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) in real-time.
…without giving anyone your medical records!
Please check it out if you get the chance.
I am very optimistic about Google’s idea on condition that it can be secure and easily updatable and editable to correct errors.
A friend of mine requested medical records from his primary physician and even after a month has yet to recieve the records.
Humans may just have to improve, anyway.