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Google Go for Medical Records |
I find the following news disturbing and a little strange.
Google Inc. unveiled Google Health, a U.S. health information service that combines the company's search services with a user's personal health records online.
The information includes their basic medical history and relevant information connected to their health conditions, and schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, receive diagnostic results online, and instantly add their doctors' e-mail addresses to a list of contacts at the site.
As for the information privacy, Google said it is a password-protected service and the company would store the information on computers that are separate from the company's other endeavours and had created an additional layer of security.
Many health care providers use electronic health records. Google Health is an attempt to bring those records together in an easily accessible place. The service includes links to major U.S. pharmacies, doctors' groups and medical testing labs.
Not Me!!!
Well for one thing I am never going to use this service. For now it is only in the US, can you ever imagine it being offered in the UK? Google working with the NHS? Our public sector agencies do not need a third party to lose data they can do it all by themselves. The massive overspend on IT projects in the NHS is well known and I doubt that the NHS has what it takes to interface with Google.
Outside of these issues I find all this somewhat ridiculous. Google is a very good search engine with a range of additional valuable services. People have questioned Google's view on data privacy before, and I am not going to enter into that debate.
Some of you may remember the days of Thatcherism and the rise of the advertising agencies. Some of the largest players in the industry were supporters of Thatcher and were credited with having a major influence on her key campaigns.
As a result Ad agencies got everything the way they wanted it and things got so bad that clients were being told what to do by Ad men. They began to dictate to the market and vast huge sums of money was spent of very artistic campaigns for large organisations. You may have seen the recent TV programs about this.
One agency got very big very quickly and decided that they would buy one of the major UK banks. The city reacted to this very badly. There were just an ad agency after all. What did they know about financial matters?
Now Google thinks it can manage medical records, have they gone a step to far? I think so.
Google are very good at what they do. In my view they should stick to it.
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