Google to Store Patients' Health Records

Thu, 02/21/2008 - 06:51 — Blake

Google will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.

The pilot project to be announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google's new service, which won't be open to the general public.

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Comments

Thu, 02/21/2008 - 12:11 — Great Western Dragon

Well...

You know, if someone could do something like this... and do it correctly, it might just be helpful.

I think most of us have had to shuffle our medical records from one doctor to another, one office to another. Faxing, mailing, signing, agreeing, counter-signing, reading yet another HIPAA brochure; all because there's no standard way to store, access, or transfer medical documents.

Wouldn't it almost be great if you're sitting in a doctor's office and they ask you for your last set of chest X-rays and you tell them sure, give them a password to an online account, and they just, you know, go get them?

It wouldn't be a system everybody would probably want to use, but I'm one of those people who isn't too hung up about my medical records. If I'm in a bad accident, I've got crap all over me telling EMTs, doctors, or some dude walking down the street all the things that are wrong with me.

Arguments from authority are unacceptable. ~Carl Sagan