Filed under: Computers, Google
Google already knows everything else about you, your schedule, the contents of your E-mail, even what web pages you visit, so why not let it get its hands on what’s inside your body?
Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement of its HealthVault initiative, Google has decided to announce its plans to work on digitizing health records and making them portable. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, made the announcement Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Mayer said the company became interested in the health record market following Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane destroyed not only buildings, but everything within them. This included the health records of millions of people held in hospitals and private medical practices across the Gulf Coast.
She went on to say that “it doesn’t make sense to generate this volume of information on paper. It should be something that is digital. People should have control over their own records.”
With this technology, if a patient changes physicians he could simply call up previous X-rays digitally rather than transfer or re-take them. The digital transition is hardly an overnight process, and Mayer acknowledges that. “It is a huge endeavor. It will take a lot of breakthroughs in digitization,” she said.
“You’ll be seeing a lot more activity here… so stay tuned.”
From Slashdot and Computer World
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- Gmail Overhaul on the Way?
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