I didn’t know they had done this. Just ran across it recently. This is a cool concept, though a little big brother if you know what I mean. It strives to give people a centralized place to store their health records online so they can share them with health providers.
I have no idea how much of a response they got from this – but the concept is way cool technology wise, but way scary in other respects, like privacy.
The link is www.google.com/health
You create a user account and can put in things like existing medical conditions, allergies, medicines being taken and the like. This part doesn’t sound too scary.
You can also IMPORT medical records from pharmacies. This is where I start to squint my eyes a bit. Or you can import from medical facilities who have agreed to be partners (who wouldn’t?)
Here are a few who have: Longs Drug Stores, Walgreens Pharmacy, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and others.
Supposedly measures are being taken to secure these servers better than their other servers and users are able to decide who can see their info… We’ll see. Sounds like a prime candidate for a hacker challenge to me.
And it’s important to note that Google isn’t the only search engine taking steps this direction. Microsoft has been working on its Health Vault initiative, WebMD and Revolution Health Group has been founded by AOl cofounder Steve Case.
Hmmm… Any thoughts?