See your link here
Google edges closer to offering personal health records
6 commentsIt appears that Google is edging closer to launching the online personal health records that it first began talking about in October. According to a new beta Google Health site, Google Health will allow users to build online health profiles for themselves, download medical records from doctors and pharmacies, get personalized health guidance and relevant news and find qualified doctors. The site, which doesn’t allow users to log-in yet, also notes that it will allow users to share health information with family or caregivers.
Google has said it became interested in personal health records after the damage to paper-based records caused by Hurricane Katrina. Google executives have described scenarios where people could store x-rays with Google Health so they would not have to have duplicate tests done when seeing a new doctor but could instead present the existing x-rays or point the new doc online.
After covering health IT for several years, I have been intrigued by the theories behind having consumers themselves store health data online. It makes sense in many ways. For example, a personal health record (PHR) allows people to compile a comprehensive list of all the medications they take in one place so they can ensure that all the doctors they see know what medicines they are taking to avoid any interactions. And it could theoretically reduce the amount of costly tests that a doctor does if he or she could easily be presented with the most recent lab results a patient had done by another health care provider.
But while many people may likely turn to Google Health for more personalized health guidance from search (84 % of online consumers have researched health care topics within the past year, according to Forrester Research) the reality has been that many people just have not been that interested in keeping their health records online. Some of the nation’s largest health care insurance companies including Aetna and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans are investing millions of dollars into offering their members access to their own online records.
In addition to the potential benefits mentioned above, these companies envision that if they use the health record to remind people of specific behavioral changes that need to be made (reminding a diabetic, for example, of a needed eye exam or urging women over a certain age to get a mammogram) that they will better the member’s health and help bolster their own bottom line.
However, a November Forrester Research report found that 10 of 13 large health plans offering PHRs said that a lack of understanding by members of the value of PHRs was a limitation to the use of the technology. In addition, five of the 13 plans said that a limitation was a lack of interest among members to using PHRs. In addition, eight of the 13 plans said that a lack of incentives was holding back the use of the technology.
If these health plans – who populate the PHRs with most of the relevant data themselves – and who have focused intently on developing tight security mechanisms that dovetail with the back-end IT systems that contain all of this health data have had trouble getting people to use PHRs, is it likely that Google will fare better? I wouldn’t bet on it, but Google being Google, it is never safe to bet against them either. What do you think? Send me your comments.
Print
Email this
Digg this
