While I know that privacy advocates haven’t been exactly shy over expressing discomfort about just how easy it is to link personal information online these days, but I’ve got to believe that the grumbling will be turned up a notch real soon now.
Seen in the Wall Street Journal (subscriber link):
Google Inc. plans today to announce an online repository where consumers can store their health information—a move that could boost the nation’s fledgling efforts to adopt electronic medical records.
With the Web service, expected to be called Google Health, consumers will be able to enter their own basic medical data and invite their doctors to electronically send information that would be stored by Google, according to one person who has tested the company’s new site. Google declined to comment on the service.
Google’s initiative puts it in company with Internet rival Microsoft Corp. and Revolution Health Group LLC, led by America Online Inc. co-founder Steve Case, in launching sites for users to fill out and manage online profiles that are known as personal health records. The companies are seeking to get in on the ground floor as more health practitioners begin digitizing records. President Bush has called for most Americans to have access to electronic medical records by 2014, because of the potential to reduce health-care costs and prevent medical errors.
Considering the nightmare my wife and I have been having in an ongoing health insurance squabble—a nightmare involving lost documentation, letters sent via slow snail-mail crossing and aggravating miscommunication—the idea of shifting the mess online, and increasing patients’ access is extremely appealing to me, especially if the services include the ability to monitor who can access what information, and to see who has been accessing what records.
However, I would be concerned by the potential balkanization and/or mutual incompatibility among the services rendering this portion of the brave new data-driven world ineffective.
And then, there is also (of course) the threat of crackers and snoops intruding and possibly abusing your information. Microsoft, AOL, and (to a lesser extent) Google haven’t exactly been perfect when it comes to security.
1 response so far ↓
1 Mike // 2 Mar 2008 at 7:23 am
Securing the medical data of people around the country on the google servers has indeed become a big privacy issue for the government. let us hope the data on their servers remain safe and private.