Google and Cleveland Clinic Team Up
By MedHeadlines • Feb 21st, 2008 • Category: Lifestyle, MedTechGoogle and the Cleveland Clinic are beginning a pilot project to link the health information for some of clinic’s patients with Google personal health records. The pilot project will last six to eight weeks, and involve less than 10,000 patients.
The Cleveland Clinic has more than 100,000 patients and many of those are retirees who spend some of the year elsewhere such as Arizona and Florida. And when they go, their medical records don’t follow says Dr. C. Martin Harris, the clinic’s chief information officer.
The Google personal health record Harris says is a solution to that problem, among others. A person can approve the transfer of information on medical conditions, allergies, medications and laboratory results from the clinic’s computers to a Google personal health record.
Google’s personal health record is still in development, and it will be introduced publicly and made widely available, after the pilot project is concluded. However, other facilities are ready to jump on board. “This is truly a patient-controlled health record, and that’s a very significant step in the drive toward a more consumer-oriented system of health care,” says Dr. John D. Halamka, chief information officer of the Harvard Medical School.
Who can be sure that, say, life insurance companies will not attempt to hack in such records?
This availability of medical records could save more than a few lives. Hope it goes well and others follow. So many people have previous medical histories that aren’t remembered by families or the pt is too ill to convey in an emergency. I see a lot of positives in this. Hope the pilot studies go well.
Computerised health records are a good idea, however they still need to be updated by a health worker. It once took my Gran (who had an eating disorder), half an hour…………to work out that the grapes I’d given her to eat were actually made of rubber. I dread to think what her health records would have looked like if she had tried to update them herself.
[...] The Cleveland Clinic has more than 100,000 patients and many of those are retirees who spend some of the year elsewhere such as Arizona and Florida. And when they go, their medical records don’t follow says Dr. C. Martin Harris, the clinic’s chief information officer. Read more [...]
big brother will like it
Being a cardiac patient I like the project a lot. However, as a civil libertarian, I am reminded of how Bush was caught abusing the powers of the NSA recently. I know in California their experimentation with giving homeless people a smart card that had all of their medical information was very effective. Even if this were all voluntary what would happen to all those who refused to participate? For me the positives outweigh the negatives, but I think of people who carry the AIDS virus or some other health condition that they would like to keep private.
Google is again expanding its world domination plans. This is a little bit surreal watching it all pan out in front of me.
Google always offer new and great idea. two thumbs up
It’s the user’s choice to participate and to log off once not required.
Great initiative by Google to help those that e.g. need certain blood types quickly, etc.
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