Google Health has arrived — except maybe not
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google will announce its long-awaited online health service featuring “personal health records” today. A closer reading of that story, however — bolstered by a timely CNET piece — suggests that Google will simply preview its service at a healthcare-IT trade show now underway in Orlando.
A preview is better than nothing, of course. But if that’s all Google has planned today, it’s really not much of a launch. We unpack the WSJ… Continue Reading
Google Health is here — or is it?
(UPDATED: See below.)
Well, the WSJ says so in this somewhat breathless report that states Google will announce its long-awaited personal health-record service today.
My first thought was that the announcement was timed to get Google on the record in advance of the Health2.0 “Spring Fling” conference in San Diego next week, which will feature lots of talk about the role of the Internet in improving healthcare. Another possibility is that Google is pulling a bait-and-switch similar… Continue Reading
Google Health’s Cleveland pilot program — and the nagging questions it doesn’t come close to answering
So Google Health has finally made its first formal announcement — not a splashy rollout along the lines of Microsoft’s HealthVault (see our coverage), but a limited — and closed to the public — testbed launched in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic.
Here’s what we know about the project: The Cleveland Clinic, which already has a sophisticated electronic medical-records system serving some 100,000 patients, will allow 1,500 to 10,000 of them to sync up their records… Continue Reading
Does Microsoft’s HealthVault really protect your privacy?
When Microsoft launched its much-ballyhooed HealthVault medical-records system for individuals (see my review here), it made such a fetish of security protections that it virtually rendered the service unusable. My own effort just to establish a HealthVault account took roughly two hours, much of that devoted to simply coming up with a password the system would accept; I documented the struggle here. One of the company’s PR reps even emailed me to note that Microsoft… Continue Reading