The mighty Google machine keeps on ticking, even after taking a temporary licking. Having more or less recovered from Wall Street's infectious doubt about the health of its ad business earlier this week, Google on Thursday offered a glimpse of Google Health, its upcoming personal health records management service. "Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful," said Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search and user products, in a blog post. "Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online." Coincidentally last week, the World Privacy Forum released a report warning that personal health records (PHR) are not protected by federal privacy and security rules and that putting PHRs online raises a number of privacy risks. Knowing Google, I shouldn't think that will slow them down. Pretty soon, Google will be everywhere, and there won't be a thing you can do about it!
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Hi, I'm your GoogleDoctor!
The World Privacy Forum overstates the shortcomings of privacy law as it applies to personal health records. Patients have power to improve their privacy. Patients might, for instance, post legal terms and conditions in their records. http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/02/contracts-for-patient-privacy.html
Posted by: Benjamin Wright | March 2, 2008 2:32 PM | Permalink to Comment