Google Moving into Healthcare

I recieved my masters degree in Health Systems Management, specializing in IT, from George Mason University last year. During my studies I spent a considerable amout of time studying Electronic Health Records, Electronic Medical Records, and the proposed "National Health Record."

Lets just say the problem is how do we effectively gather, protect, and distribute electronic healthcare information that is useful to clinicians, public health officials, scientists, and patients. At the same time insuring that the most personal of all our information is protected and used against us by the government, corporations, insurance carriers, and society. And, please don't get me started on the potiential "nanny state" implications around electronic health information.

While I was a Mason I heard rumors about Google getting into health care. Soon after I graduated I read and digged an article in eWeek about google getting into the health care space.

The latest which I found on ValleyWag is some screen shots of Google Health, code named Weaver. The interesting thing is that Googles greatest asset in this space is also its greatest weakness. If anyone can lick the electronic health information portability problem Google can. However most people are not real keen on the idea of Google having access to their health information, in addition to our email, browsing history, and shopping habits.

Googles stated goal of indexing the worlds information will come up squarely against there mission to "do no evil." With this much information about individuals the tempation to take advantage of all of that data will be impossible to resist. The results range from the horrorifyingly scarry to the humorously scarry. I have heard fears range from Google putting health information to potential employeers and insurance carriers to a person with Herpes getting Adsense adds for medication during a presentation using Google docs.

On the positive side the benefits to healthcare and science are also staggering. Giving scientists "agregated" data stripped of Personally Health Information (PHI) in a large scale along with the aggregated browsing, shopping, and email habits would be enormous. Think of the connections that could be made: "Porn site visitors have an 80% increase risk of suffering from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome." Turns out it isn't the keyboards at work that is the problem its the porn on the computer!

Then I read another Valley Wag post by, Owen Thomas, that brought me a completely new perspective. His theory is that Microsoft and Google's entry into healthcare is just a expensive busy work project for executives they can not afford to get rid of. Though I tend to agree with one of the commenter's who said that Google and Microsoft's entry is great if nothing else they will shake up the establishment.

If you think Google and Microsoft are errogant in their business practices you haven't seen the heavy weights of healthcare IT. Nothing says closed, proprietary, legacy like GE, Phillips, 3M, and Siemens. Google and Microsoft will be a big threat to them and that will be a battle of biblical proportions that might actually do some good once the dust settles. The scarry thing again is, this is healthcare and thus human lives that are at risk.