Google knows a lot about me. I use their services for my personal email, my calendar, and my documents. However, they don’t know about my prescriptions, medical history, or exercise habits.
Yet.
Yesterday, Google Blogoscoped tracked down a login screen for the search giant’s long-awaited health product. On that screen, Google claims you can:
* Build online health profiles that belong to you
* Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
* Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
* Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
* Share selected information with family or caregivers
Will this coming web-ification of health records have an effect on “cyberchondria?”
What do you think? How much information about your family’s personal health would you give to a service like this?
I would not feel comfortable handing over my personal health information to an online service. I beleive that sort of information should be between the patient and health care providers. I have a feeling that cybercondriacs will be all over this type of service. There is often much misinterpretation when ‘patients’ self-diagnose their own ailments.
Thank you and love your show Nora!!
Like you, Dan, Google has a piece of pretty well all aspects of my personal life. I’m down with Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Pages…pretty well anything Google sticks their name on. I’m a sucker, what can I say.
So what do I think about Google getting a hold of my health data? My first reaction is “meh, they can have it”, but then I recall my outrage when I heard of this: http://www.healthvault.com/
Yes, Microsoft’s foray into this same area. The difference? I dislike Microsoft because I don’t know when they are reaping my personal data. At least Google is (mostly) upfront about it.
Generally speaking I think it is a good concept to attempt to give people more opportunities to gain knowledge related to their health and actively manage it. Working in the health care field we focus a lot of our efforts to promoting “wellness” and prevention, but often don’t provide the tools people need to do this in their lives.
Maybe Google has yet again found a winner. Or maybe I’ll just get more targeted ads, just now related to my health.
Like Ben, I use a lot of web-based Google products. It’s particularly helpful if, like me, you move around from computer to computer.
Without knowing a lot of what Google Health is going to be, it’s harder to see what the advantage of this would be. Yes, I can see why I would want my appointments online, but why would I need my personal health information online?
And personalized health news? If I had a specific, persistent health issue, I think it would be smarter to join an online community around the issue, or get RSS feeds from an association for the condition, where humans have filtered the information first.
But as a source for personalized ads for an ageing and more health care dependent population? Very smart.
To offset cyberchondria posts, what about those cases where someone finds medical/health information on the Web that proves to be genuinely useful? My daughter was diagnosed in–utero as having a congenital heart defect. That evening I wore out search engines finding out as much as I could about the heart, its normal operation, about her condition and the surgeries that she faced. It helped me to ask meaningful questions of her surgical team, cardiologist and nurses. We use the Internet to keep in touch with the parents of other "heart babies" and it helped us to keep family and friends back home in Britain informed as to her progress. Today she is a happy, healthy, very energetic two-year-old who likes pineapple, squiirels and Dora the Explorer. By the way, Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week is right around the corner.
Smart if its creating a professional and accurate source of medical information for the lay person. And also it would be great way to find advice,and/or Doctors, especially with the family Doctor shortage. But,
I think it would eventually be another way for targeted ads. But, in terms of more of your information being out there… does it really matter anyway? I think we should face are privacy fears and except that digitally there is not much privacy to be had.
This just sounds like another way for google to help companies target there products directly at the people most likely to use them. For example, if google sees my weight is high, I get more ads for weightloss products. Or if it sees that I wear contact lenses, I got more ads for laser correction.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I really don’t want my medical conditions to be used for marketing purposes.
Agreed, mt. I feel the same about this matter. Google and other search engines are doing this for the marketing indstry. Hell, they don’t care what is wrong with anyone, the just want people to buy the medical treatments or drugs so they can benefit from the process. It’s almost like the hotmail thing, or when you sign up for certain sites, liek for example; dating sites, television show sites, etc etc etc… the questions you answer reflecty on the ads that pop up and are advertised.
Google is all about combining its massive search engine data with its advertising punch to attract companies who want to spend money on their sites. For that, there isn’t a major problem. Where things start to go fuzzy is that with consolidation in the mediasphere (witness the recent attempt at bringing Yahoo! under Microsoft’s umbrella), the realistic options for using a search engine have become limited. This is important because, if we all agree that a search tool like Google is an important and maybe necessary technology to aid us in everyday life, then the prospects of this company also having access to sensitive health details is problematic. In cases like this, the public needs to have some accountability structure to point to with Google (or whatever provider we’re talking about) that safeguards the linking of this information. Just having a corporate privacy statement that says they won’t share data is not sufficient without a level of oversight to ensure that this is adhered to.
That stated, Google already knows a lot about you as everytime you use the search engine it logs what we are searching for and at some point that funny look sore you describe online might just be attributed to you.
Google is right about the consumer already being in there, deep. It started with Deja Vu, then Usenet, Google Groups, now individually owned websites and blogs. These flourished *because* they went against industry sponsored health information, which the savvy health consumer is so done with. If all Google is going to do is become more of that *eminence based medicine, with information raking for ads and pharma, I’m not interested. The only real computer security is offline, permanently. I will be watching though, and assessing how this new potential incursion into consumer’s rights is coming along. Google does have the goods to actually do something different here, but I’m concerned they’re heading in the wrong direction. The guerrilla health consumers Google enabled in Google groups will be watching.
Is there a Doctor in the house. Those two poor sick people Dr. G made ill. If these are both current conditions
start by checking their temps. The first one is likley suffering from SAD. I would prescribe Vitamins D and B and tell them to get some Sun. The second poor soul needs to have his tonsils checked or has he or she been in the pool and has swimmer’s ear. And Like any online advice it is only going to hurt the the one that takes it.
The question was asked, “who would want this information, anyway?” In truth, some pretty major players, in most people’s lives.
As a Worker Advocate with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the kind of personal medical information being contemplated for inclusion on these search engines is just the sort of stuff that most employers, insurance companies and Worker Compensation Boards would love to get their hands on, more readily.
I spend a great deal of time knocking heads with these groups, attempting to limit their ability to intrude upon people’s right to medical privacy. It is all too common for a WCB or insurance company – usually on behalf of an employer – to deny benefits, all on the basis of some decades old, unrelated accident or ailment. This would certainly make things easier for them to do so.
Great show!
Online Health Records? Would you put your Social Insurance Number online? Of course not.
To me it would be almost as dangerous to leave your personal health records floating in cyberspace for all to access.
Besides the obvious Marketing glut motivating Google’s grab for our health data, consider this: There’s no shortage of examples in history of Corporations accidentally or otherwise doing the wrong things with people’s information, their lives, and their health. Take a look back at the horrible Pacer and how the car company decided it was cheaper to pay off the families of the people they killed than to fix the exploding gas tank problem. Likewise with airplane manufacturers and faulty wiring, tobacco companies and cancer, the chemical companies and on and on an on. The point is, we shouldn’t be trusting our very personal and very powerful, even dangerous information, to a corporation. This information is normally kept behind the vault of government regulation for a good reason. I’m surprised there’s only one comment so far about what we think an INSURANCE COMPANY (oh yeah, and that’s a Corporation! what was that movie or book, The Corporation about…? didn’t it say something about Corporations being psychotic?) is going to do with our personal health records. If that delicate information is floating around some Google farm, I certainly don’t think it’ll be long before the Insurance Company wolves get over the fence, and then our ‘Brave New Animal Farm’ just got a whole lot scarier…
But.. I could be wrong.