The more I read about Google’s (and others’) efforts in the area of health, the less impressed and more worried I am. While offering a personalized health record online is hardly a new idea, I suppose with Google’s name behind it, the effort might gain some traction in the range of 1% or 2% of Americans.
But honestly, most Americans don’t want to become their own personal record-keepers for every facet of their lives. I have enough going on in my life that I don’t want to have to log in daily to detail every habit, food, exercise or medication I may partake of. Some people do like to do that, but most people aren’t in that camp.
Who does care about monitoring their health? People with chronic or serious health problems, and some, but not all, families. They care, because their very lives may be at stake, or because they care about trying to ensure their children have all of their healthcare needs met.
But for most people, health is almost always something you think about when something goes horribly wrong, not something you think about on a daily basis. And so while a personal health record online is a nice thing, I’d be more than a little concerned trusting this kind of information to a huge marketing company like Google, or even the likes of WebMD. Because I have no reason to believe that they are only doing this to “help” me, they are also doing it to make a buck off of my health information.
It seems to me, the last thing we need in this country right now is yet more layers of companies trying to make money off of the sick.
Read the New York Times article for more: Google and Microsoft Look to Change Health Care
(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)
Loading ...You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
4 Comments to
“Google Looks to Personal Healthcare Records”
> while a personal health record online is a nice thing, I’d be more than a little concerned trusting this kind of information to a huge marketing company like Google, or even the likes of WebMD. Because I have no reason to believe that they are only doing this to “help” me, they are also doing it to make a buck off of my health information.
yeah, I agree. of course… one might feel the same way about entrusting ones health information to psychcentral…
Yes, and that is precisely why we’re not in the personal healthcare records business, like these other companies are.
While Google thinks *you* should be in charge of your own data, that data still doesn’t reside with you — it resides with Google. And guess what people would be willing to pay Google to get access to even anonymized aggregate forms of that data? Billions.
Ah. I guess I thought that there were site features like the ’sanity score’ etc that stored your results so that you could track them over time.
I agree that I wouldn’t trust my health information to an online source. Hackers etc etc etc. One thing that would worry me would be the fineprint on the Google statement of confidentiality. The statement of confidentiality on Gmail isn’t exactly inspiring, for example. I do tend to think that the Google staff have better things to do than to trawl through my personal emails, but I do indeed take the point that if there were easy access to personal health information that there would indeed be a significant market for that. Let the consumer beware, I suppose.
I’m not worried about Google employees (although security breaches at various companies with people’s personal data are a continuing example of how no company can guarantee absolute confidentiality).
I’m worried about what Google decides it can do with that data in aggregate, or by compiling it into “risk groups.” Or finding out 10 years later my SS# in supposedly anonymous data was accidentally associated with the wrong risk group, contributing to a denial of coverage when most needed.
Even with the most stringent protections in place, putting all of this data in one place has both risks and rewards. I’m worried too many people discuss the rewards (look, I can share all of my health data with any doc in the world!) with minimal acknowledgment of the risks.
Join the Conversation! Post a Comment:
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 15 Aug 2007
