Google Health

There was much abuzz this week about Google Health - a free personal health record (PHR) that will allow users to access an on-line repository for their health information. The thought is that this medical record would be portable, potentially comprehensive and patients would control/own it.

At HIMSS, Google's Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt demo'd the company's new medical record and history storage service that will include medical records, x-rays and information about allergies, vaccinations and prescriptions. Google's approach is to partner with health care providers so that if the user chooses, a provider, pharmacy or payer can also upload records and other information and access the profile.

Google also announced it was partnering with the Cleveland Clinic to test things out. Following that, Google will tweak the system before launching it nationwide. No date has been set for the nationwide roll out but a Google executive said Google Health would launch before the end of 2008.

Other announced partners for Google Health include Walgreens, Quest Diagnostics, the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, several large hospitals and several providers of personal health records.

Last year, Microsoft introduced their PHR, HealthVault and they too have established several key partnerships.

Outside of the obvious privacy concerns, interoperability will be a huge barrier to success as all this data lives electronically in multiple places, if at all. Recent stats indicate that roughly only 20-25% of the physician practices have implemented an EMR to date.

However... if anyone is going to have a successful run at this, it would be Google and Microsoft. Let's all buckle in for an interesting ride.