Could Google Health be the future of patient record sharing?
Google Health is an online repository for your health information. It is a rival to other services that already exist, but it is Google, so it may become all-powerful. This sort of service is probably the answer to the age-old question of patients carrying a smart card with their health-information on it. But will it be that service?
What are the advantages for patients?
At the moment, Google Health is theoretically only for US consumers (but, they let this Australian set up a profile). It integrates with a number of web services that allow doctors to access a Google Health record, (with that patient’s permission).
But record-sharing aside, there are other advantages for patients. The patient can choose to use their information as a search string to collect relevant blog and reference pages and store them within their profile. I’m sure the quality of that information is variable, but a lot of it has been compiled with this project in mind. There is no doubt that patients who go through the process of documenting their medical history will have a better understanding of their health and how different conditions interact. Even the visual cue of a long list of conditions could change the way patients view health-prevention.
Maybe a patient who has no insight into their health (or lack thereof) should be encouraged to use a service like this - the noughties equivalent of making a big list of their diseases (but with added cross-referencing, and intuitive interface).
Could Google Health Help Doctors access accurate patient information?
This could be part of the solution to clinical record sharing, particularly if providers are allowed to use different clients to access the information. However, the question remains whether doctors will be happy with a record that can be edited by patients. Certainly, the information you receive from a download will be not much better quality than that from a patient interview. However, it will be easier for patients to provide a true list of their medications.
Techcrunch has done a review and a quick run-down of services available, as well as a comparison with other services available
In order for Google Health to be of much use, you need to tell it about your health history by creating a personal medical profile. It is easy enough to get started. You tell it your age, weight, medical conditions, medications, allergies, and so on.
It is obviously unlcear at this stage what role this will have in the future, but certainly there are enough people using Google services regularly to make this a viable entity. If google-savvy patients team up with google-savvy doctors, whi knows what may come of it.
More information here.
What do you think? Could you use this in your practise in the future? How would you like a web health record like this to integrate with your current Patient Information Manager?
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Really nice to know about the patient records. I think that the cost to go from paper-based medical records to electronic medical records can be time consuming and costly but the benefits will greatly outweigh the costs in the long run.