Archive for ‘Google Health’

December 5th, 2007

PHR: Pretty Half-hearted Reception for Personal Health Record

by admin

Which type of Personal Health Record Application do you prefer?

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Why is that despite the presence or more than 200 vendors of PHR products only less than 5 % of the consumers in North America use any PHR.

The main reasons are:

1.Lack of privacy policy

2.Lack of communication between providers and users

3.Lack of education about benefits of PHR.

In the first generation model of PHRs,

Vendors have had a hard time selling the idea of a personal medical diary to healthy consumers who see their doctors maybe once or twice a year. In addition to privacy and security concerns, patients are staying away because the PHRs on the market aren’t doing much to entice them, analysts say. The industry also has failed to come up with a convincing argument for why doctors should encourage their use.

But ,now with the growth of Web 2.0 technology,PHR can developed with next generation models,
Vendors are reaching out to health plans and employers in hopes of encouraging PHR use through incentives. And expanded data sets make the records more useful to physicians.
as PHR vendors add functionalities such as secure e-mailing and online scheduling, more people will create PHRs.

Also the lack of consensus definition about what exactly is PHR is hampering widespread use.Many of the consumers and also vendors assume that PHR ane EHR are one and the same product.While in some aspects they deal with your health record,but in reality they are two different entities all together.

PHR are individually controlled record of your health either in electronic or paper based format.While EHR are your health records controlled by the Hospital or medical center,

The future:

But while there is great hope for the future of PHRs, it remains to be seen what role they will play in transforming health care, even if they gain widespread acceptance among patients.

Many physicians and also patients are still skeptical about the potential benefits of PHR,they feel that it may not deliver the results as projected.Only time will tell,when internet came around in the nineties many thought it was also a passing fad,but today it is part of our life.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

CategoryGoogle Health, Health Education, Medicine 2.0, Microsoft Health Vault, PHR, Personal Health Record, Privacy | CommentNo Comments »

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December 3rd, 2007

Personal Health Record-offline Vs Online

by admin

Which type of Personal Health Record Application do you prefer?

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The recent surge in activities around Personal Health Record business sector has been burgeoning.After the planned entry of Google Health by Google ,which was anticipated to change the health care system in North America,there was increased media speculation about Microsoft being left behind.But,Microsoft had their own plans with the entry of Microsoft Health Vault.There are numerous myths about the battle fought between Microsoft and Google on Health Sector.
Microsoft Health Vault is just a platform,it is a collection of different vendors selling PHR products.Microsoft offers a environment in which all these vendors of PHR products could be together.
What Google plans is going to keenly watched will it be similar to Google Social or Android-mobile phone application platform or just a stand alone Personal Health Record?
Google plans to launch an online health service that will include personal medical records, health-care-related search features, diet and exercise regimens, and a directory of physicians with links to Web sites.

Health is unique but also Universal, it is extremely complex and expensive.To create an ideal PHR business model is not going to be an easy task.People who use PHR,ie stakeholders ranging from patients to physicians to health officials in Government are all worried about one major issue and that is Privacy and security of the collected data.

Privacy Pitfalls

Anita Allen, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on privacy law, says no matter what entity endorses personal online medical records, privacy issues will loom large. “Anyone’s health records should be regarded as personal and sensitive,” says Allen. “People need to be mindful of discrimination from employers and insurers.”

One issue with HealthVault and similar efforts is that they aren’t covered by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). HIPAA, passed in 1996, created standards for electronic health care transactions and addressed security and privacy issues. Under HIPAA, a patient’s medical record and payment history can’t be linked to an individual by an unauthorized person. These rules apply to health plans, health care clearinghouses — such as billing services and information providers — and health care networks.

Although HIPAA covers the institutions installing EMR systems, Allen says that regulation wouldn’t cover entities like Microsoft, Google or any other web service that allows medical records to be stored online. “HIPAA doesn’t prevent you from uploading information and accepting terms of an agreement. Anything that happens to those records is routine and covered in courts under privacy law.”

More here..

The other questions which are pertinent to PHR world are

Populating the data-should it be by physicians or individuals?

How will the business vendors of PHR products generate revenues if they offer it for free?If paid ,Who will pay for the system?Patients or their employers or insurance.

How long will the health data be stored?How many years?


Meanwhile Wallstreet Journal along with Harris Interactive has just released another poll about Personal health records and their impact on American people.
The survey of 2,153 U.S. adults, conducted Nov. 12-14, shows three-quarters of respondents agree that patients could receive better care if doctors and researchers were able to share information more easily via electronic systems and 63% agree sharing of such records could decrease medical errors. Fifty-five percent agree this could reduce health-care costs, compared with 15% who disagree. However, about one-quarter of adults remain unsure whether electronic medical records can provide these benefits.

More here..

There still many more questions which need to be answered,before we can have a conclusive answer.Health care industry is a large ocean and PHR is just one subset of this ocean.

The Laws of More (Moore’s, on computing power; Nielsen’s, on bandwidth) continue to make technology smaller, more powerful, more ubiquitous, easier to use and cheaper to buy. But human beings are rapidly approaching the satiation point when it comes to how much time they can devote to using all this technology.

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Popularity: 65% [?]

CategoryGoogle Health, Medicine 2.0, Microsoft Health Vault, PHR, Personal Health Record, Privacy, Technology | Comment5 Comments »

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August 14th, 2007

The future of Medicine 2.0 with Google or Microsoft

by admin

“When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable” -Anton Chekhov

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Picture credit:Express Healthcare India

Official Google Blog: New advisory group on health

With Google forming an Health Advisory Council that looks as more US centric,but delivering Health information across the globe!

Where do you want to go today? Google or Microsoft for your personal health record information storage needs?

In the current news at Health care world Google and Microsoft are keen to enter into the world of Personal Health Record world.With Health care technology is billed as the next big revolution in IT industry.It is quite certain that the next wave of supremacy will be to be the leader in health care information.

With last year study in BMJ showing that Google searches revealed the correct diagnosis in 15 (58%, 95% confidence interval 38% to 77%) cases.it’s only a matter of time,before Google or Microsoft enters into Health care arena to battle for supremacy.But,health although is universal issue,yet the delivery of health care information is not quite simple.

Many people would like to avoid issues about health as much as possible and stay far away from it,because health is always associated with something bad.That means when you are healthy,disease free you don’t want to think or talk about it.Health is equated to sickness.Health is depressing.

The future of Medicine will be more of preventive care,with patientIndividual-centric model.Wherein the Healthy Individuals will have more control over their health and also mode of delivery.The beginning will be by optimizing health care information through education.Followed by personal health record.Then by delivering pertinent information to physicians..

Web 2.0 is the extension of the web 1.0,in fact it represents the true power of Internet as envisioned by Sir Timothy John Berners- Lee.But,the proliferation of numerous websites and also information resources has also diluted the quality of information. Today,we need to wade across vast repository of online information if we need to collect good quality information.

The Search is dominated by SEO (Search Engine Optimized )techniques and also numerous other analytics which makes only SEO rich websites rank on top of the list and really good informed websites are way below.

Moreover,the web as of today is not semantic enough to retrieve results of what we actually need,but it is a pile of huge amount of content.In the world of medicine,although for physicians the current web may help in arriving at rapid diagnosis,yet patients need to be careful as many users tend to use information provided in Internet to diagnose or treat any illness, disease, health problem, or metabolic disorder without consulting physicians or health care providers.This is one of the dangerous side effect of uncontrolled web 1.0 proliferation.

Semantic Web

Popularity: 11% [?]

CategoryGoogle Health, Main, Technology, Web 2.0 | Comment7 Comments »

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