Monday, May 19, 2008

Google Health Launches

It's live. Open for business. The first two hospitals to offer a CCR export to your PHR: Cleaveland Clinic and Beth Israel. More will follow suit, I'm sure. I wish Google luck and may the best PHR win.

The Announcement

The blogs are a-twitter, sort of... Technorati has a few hits.

There's also a snarky but good discussion on this blog by a local med student. Go Trees, beat Cal, etc.

The app itself has a ways to go. Google Minimalism probably isn't what I want to manage my health. In fact, it looks like the application my team built five years ago, but less sophisticated (sorry Google -- you know it's true). For one thing we apply existing access rules derived from the EMR itself. We also have the best find-a-doctor, but whatever. Clearly Google's intent is not to create a consumer product, but a reference implementation for all those start-ups and dreamers looking at the size of the health care market right now. At this point anyone could hit on the killer app. All you need is an SDK, the right idea, one computer and a lot of gumption. Nobody knows what online health care will look like yet. It's sure not going to look like those paper charts designed in the 1800s that doctors will continue using until we come up with something better.

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