Whether it be bills, insurance forms, medical records or prescriptions, patients are often inundated with vast quantities of paper. Google Health is now trying to help you organize all of this paperwork in its platform. Google Health, which finally launched last May after months of rumors, has ambitions to become a centralized and secure place to store medical records online.
The new feature lets patients upload scanned paper documents into your Google Health account. Google particularly suggests that you upload an “advance directive,” which determines your end-of-life wishes so that your family and doctor can honor them if you get sick and are unable to communicate. Google Health is actually working with a advance directive provider, Caring Connections, to provide a free, downloadable form customized for all 50 states. In order to complete the form, you need to download it, print it out, complete it, scan it, and upload it back to Google Health.
Google Health also recently launched a feature that gives users the ability to share their medical history with designated family or close friends. The whole concept of hosting medical records online raises security concerns for many but Google says it is taking lengthy measures to ensure the security of the data, associating invite links to specific Email addresses and allowing users to track who has viewed their records. All shared records are also read-only.
Jesus christ, Google is taking over everything.
They’re spoiling the fun by targeting everything.
David, now if they could only get the insurance companies to stop finding ways to avoid patients claims.
Sure, they just now need to setup an “Earthclass mail” type add-on for the company to situate themselves completely between the patients and the insurance.
If Google were to offer send and receive mailing automation, as well as the instant OCR/scanning, archival, like the larger insurance companies do for themselves, the patients would have much more control over their bodies and health. A good example of an insurer which does massive amounts of data archival is State Compensation Insurance Fund, which is the for profit Workers Compensation insurer of last resort of California.
SCIF located their automation center in Victorville, CA, I’m sure Google could find some dark fiber, and cheap real estate next door, so Postal Mailing times would at most ever be 1 business day. The travel of physical items between multiple post offices would be lessened, fuel energy could also be greatly saved and the chance of lost mail further mitigated.
wow, I talked to my VC friends about this and dental x-ray’s back in 1994
It only took 15 years to happen.
V
They need to find a way to give the appropriate people access to this info. What good is an Advanced Directive if doctors/family can’t get it out of my Google Health account?
Wow.. This is great. I am been waiting for them to add this feature. It will serve as a stop-gap measure until all the EHR out there connect to Google Health. Looking forward to the upgrades moving forward.
I am really an advocate of web based collaboration and applications (obviously). But if I look at insurances policies I am really skeptical about putting medical records into the cloud. If your stuff leaks you are screwed next time you try to get or change insurance.
wow, no doubt…. glad i’m not the only one who’s kind of freaked about google doing it. Maybe just want to help 23&me? I think they’re going to have to keep very very clear walls of separation before ppl trust their medical history to “do no evil”
Many doctors are still wayyy behind with regards to technology anyway – most still want everything printed. So even if in the future controls work so that only the doctor/nurse gets the doctors get up to speed, who will control access and not marketing, insurance, etc companies? For technical people it’s fine, but my mom will give anyone and everyone her password to anything saying “I can’t figure it out.” Tough sell…. it’ll be like this in the future, but not sure a search engine is the one I trust to hold that data for me.
I consulted for doctors and clinics in Germany in the past. The funny thing is that doctors are usually hesitant with It at first but once they get into it the are also extremely careless with backups and data security – it’s scary.
I agree, docs are slow at first but the ones who pick up on technology generally help you develop the add-ons or the next version.
Many of us give google all of the information about our website (google analytics/sitemaps)
We tell google what we are interested in (search)
We tell google what websites we visit (search/chrome)
We tell google who we talk to and how often (gmail)
Some of us give the co-founder’s wife our DNA sample (23andme)
Some of us will give google our medical records (google health)
I do not want to come off as paranoid – but we sure do place a lot of trust in a publicly traded company.
Exactly.
in what sense? are you suggesting people should lie about the status of their health when applying for insurance?
No worries – just make sure to protect them by using “password” as your Google Health password.
This news is scary…… GOOGLE WANTS TO KNOW IF WE ARE HEALTH TO SURF THE NET
yeah, I agree with Jeff. but the last paragraph does mention they have something like that set up. Moreover, I am sure they are working on tweaking it.
This is not the first time a company is trying to the be “all” of patient health records. There are already many sites offering this service, and the fact that one has to first print it out, sign and scan, makes it not as user-friendly as most people want. In my opinion, this feature will not significantly increase the use of Google Health. It is dead on arrival.
Great, so my health information will end up in the same hands as the Twitter business plan information?
No thanks Google.
Don’t worry. Before they launched this they already prepared the press release for the eventual data breach. You’ll feel better about this about 10min after they tell you in dulcet tones that they’ll pay for a year’s subscription to HealthInfoGard (notaffiliatedwithCignaKaiserorGoogle).
Why would anyone upload medical records to the cloud? There are enough points vulnerability to your privacy with doctor’s offices, insurance companies, and your physical storage of said records, why add another one?!
As for “Google particularly suggests that you upload an “advance directive,” which determines your end-of-life wishes so that your family and doctor can honor them if you get sick and are unable to communicate.”
This is called a living will and you don’t need google to do it. See a lawyer or go to a site like legalzoom. Plus, who knows if the courts will honor an “advance directive.”
Given recent privacy implications of having documents in the cloud, only an idiot would upload their medical info to Google!
a lot of people don’t care about privacy… facebook is a testament to that! however, i do feel google is spreading its jam too thin… and soon, very soon, someone is going to beat it in the search game!
>and soon, very soon, someone is going to beat it in the search game!
well, yeah. that’s exactly why they are researching, developing and investing in other areas.
Why would anyone want to do this.
The most worrisome part is when records are uploaded without the person’s knowledge after said person signed some kind of waiver. Google shouldn’t handle the cloud themselves but license the technology. Too many legal issues waiting to happen.
I’m waiting for the announcement of the relevant text ads they will be displaying next to your records as you browse them. And since only solid scientific cures are advertised through Google text ads, this should be a strong source of relevant medical advice.
google == microsoft
Seriously? Someone please explain to me how this is a good idea. And let’s forget for a moment all the vulnerabilities of the cloud — is Google Health HIPAA and SOX compliant? Medical corporations spend billions of dollars to attempt to secure our personal health information, and yet Google is offering this service for free?
No thanks.
Okay, so I answered my own question RE: HIPAA by simply doing a little reading.
Anyone dumb enough to share their medical records with Google ought to have their head checked.
This sounds so good, but i didn;t think about what Ben mentioned about Google having your medical information…that is a good point!
I think it is fantastic, you get hit by a car and all a paramedic has to do is download your info and he knows what to give and not to give you.
BUT indeed this could also mean that your insurance company can say: Ah mr peter we see that you’ve had this that and that so therefore we charge you more (or less). But i think that’s fair anyways: people with an unhealthy lifestyle or higher risk of trouble should pay more insurance.
People that are worried about their privacy, do you really think that privacy still exist?? all your web activity is tracked, you put your whole life in social profiles, your creditcard date is widely available to anyone who wants to pay for it, ALL your emails are going through a scanner of the us government, not to mention that all your contacts with their info are already in your Gmail addressbook together with all your calling info in google voice….
“I was robbed once so now I just leave my doors open”
People like you ruin the world with your sheer incompetence.
LOL this is funny. Google should make a video showing us how all google employees have their medical records uploaded.
It should be mandatory, for founders, top management, and the team that worked on this hideous idea while an option should be granted for all other google employees.
Upload my medical records? No thanks.
I find it fascinating that many of the posts to this article are concerned about privacy and security. Every other article about Google products on Techcrunch mostly dismiss concerns about Google’s “free” products collecting valuable data from users and privacy concerns. What do you think?
It is a matter of what is important.
I don’t care if google knows I’m looking for a deal on dress socks or that my friend Linda is looking for cheesecake recipe. I do care about giving google my entire medical history.
you don’t trust google, but you do trust other medical companies with your data. interesting !
most people don’t have their medical records (and wouldn’t have a clue about how to get them, either). they’re generally located at a number of different providers, sometimes in multiple states.
1. Google Health is a non-starter.
2. Google Health is an application not a platform – take at look at MSFT HealthVault if you want to know how a real platform functions.
3. Google lobbied to restrict the privacy provisions recently introduced as part of the ARRA so they could pull a wooly over the patient’s privacy. Of course they denied it – till a Federal Report revealed they spent about $880,000 on health-related lobbying including $230,000 it paid to third parties. Scoot over to Consumer Watch for more on the same – http://www.cons...erwatchdog.org/
4. Google Health uses the CCR standard – the inherent deficiencies of this standard prevents restricted viewing of certain health record details. (The secure approach is the CDA/CCD standard which allows restricting the viewing of certain details – permission based.)
5. Google does not at present, and will not in future, have the enterprise footprint in healthcare to make a significant contribution.
I LOL’ed at #5. You’re essentially saying because they’re a small player now they have no chance?
Not because they are a small player – they have not healthcare enterprise footprint – EMR, CDS, etc – and unless they bind these health records with those applications – there is limited utility. As an example – take a look at MSFT Health Solutions – and you will see the range of products needed to have a viable solution set. Don’t blame you – you do not know the space -so understandable why you would interpret the way you did.
work for MS much ?
@sash – no – just an entrepreneur in eHealth – No bias – just the facts.
Many consumers may hesitate to use Google Health because of privacy concerns. These concerns are justified because Google Health and many services like it (called PHRs) likely plan to use patient data for marketing. This makes patient privacy and security crucial to the effectiveness of PHRs. To date, however, no consistent set of privacy rules governs PHRs. The Center for Democracy & Technology is advocating for a comprehensive privacy framework to be enacted into law that would cover PHRs like Google Health. We did a policy post on this a little while ago. Check it out. http://cdt.org/...icyposts/2009/9.
This is great!
google health could be a good product with a few
bug fixes. i have used it, its pretty complete, now google, Fix it to where you can print all that stuff!
Uh, HIPPA anyone?
Well said. You have give your Dr a waiver to even discuss your medical info with your health insurance, even after HIPPA. Those stop gaps are in place for a reason.
10 years ago, people are careful about their phone number, address, education history, resume. Now, ppl are putting those on the street without thinking there might be problems. Now even medical history?
this is one scray news… why the hell would I want to give away my health info to GOOG when I even feel reluctant to let my employeer to know about it?
Google is doing everything and still is everywhere
I have chosen to expose myself to Google. It has been a good relationship so far
Now if they would just make a mobile borwser friendly version…
Google does seem to be taking over our lives and while many people don’t agree with it, it is helping some. This feature would be great if somehow doctors have access to it. Personally, I would never put such sensitive information on the internet, Google just wants to use it for their benefit. http://ziggytek.com/
it has no way to store medical images. why not? Yes there is some sort of upload with a 4mb limit but medical images start at around 12mb each (x-rays)
Big Brother Google wants our medical records too…
jeez what don’t they do
Many of the largest health systems are already hosting medical records online. In fact, Google is more secure than most of the internal IT infrastructure at major hospitals.
Google is doing a lot of good things for the people health.