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Google Health Opens To the Public
Several readers noted that the limited pilot test of Google Health has ended, and Google is now offering the service to the public at large. Google Health allows patients to enter health information, such as conditions and prescriptions, find related medical information, and share information with their health care providers (at the patient's request). Information may be entered manually or imported from partnered health care providers. The service is offered free of charge, and Google won't be including advertising. The WSJ and the NYTimes provide details about Google's numerous health partners.
What bothers me is that all this is built on top of tcp/ip, and that is inherently insecure.
Given that there exists hardware to inspect packets for p2p traffic, how hard would it be to for a person of unpleasant intent to get hold of some of that and start mining 'encrypted' health information.
I can see it now, 'want to get health insurance again? Pay us x dollars or we expose condition y to your health insurance provider.'
Come to think of it, all they'd need to do is pretend they had the info, someone would be bound to be hiding a condition they could hit with random emails.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I'm getting ready to start googling for an organ doner when my liver finally gives up on me.
Hopefully people will be smart enough to go visit a real doctor, rather than listen to the internet about all their life's little concerns. Sometimes symptoms may be generic to multiple conditions and self diagnosis can do more harm than help. Maybe this will set Darwinism to work at it's full potential.
I am dealing with a rare side effect from a fluoroquinolone, (think cipro, levaquin) called peripheral neuropathy. I plugged the antibiotic into google health and the side effect was not listed on the package insert. While its good to have drug interactions listed, lots of people have side effects from drugs and they need to be explicitly spelled out, not hiding in a sub menu.
I know for a fact that there is explicit warnings on the packages about this particular reaction and I'm livid it isn't warning about it on the package insert in google. Especially since it can be permanent.
I've racked up a couple thousand dollars in medical bills already from this side effect, and it was a pain to get doctors to admit it happened until I went to a major university hospital. At that hospital they diagnosed me right away and basically said I'd have to wait it out.
If you are curious, basically I couldn't walk for over a week, terrible joint pain for months along with numbness in my hands, face, and body. Its a known side effect with this class. Rare, but known.
In other words, if you are in their State, you have to follow their rules, and their rules say your price isn't affected by "condition y".
On a related note, I read an article stating that part of a McCain proposal would allow insurance companies to change their legal residency for the purpose of using another State's insurance rules. In other words, a New York insurance company can pay taxes in Arizona and use their insurance rules.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
These documents and subdocuments are so full of weasel words, Google could practically do anything they want. Example:
However, Google may only use health information you provide as permitted by the Google Health Privacy Policy, your Sharing Authorization, and applicable law.
"YOU did not provide this information. Your doctor's office provided the information, so it is exempt from these policies."
See? It took me just a quick glance to find a huge conditional that is subject to interpretation. Don't think that companies wouldn't make that argument. And Google does not have an "evil policy", so we don't have a "promise" that they'll not interpret things in a manner we didn't expect.
And that was just one example.
Maybe patients can bolster privacy by inserting legal terms of access (like an end-user license agreement) into the content of their electronic medical records. The idea is not legal advice, just something to think about. --Ben -- Sample terms for public discussion: http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/02/some-fear-law-will-not-accord-adequate.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
In times like these, I would trust Google over the government ANY DAY! I'd rather have a creative, for-profit company actually try to make a difference than have the government dick around with tax dollars that companies like Google will end up generating anyway.
It would be nice if they provided a way to export my health information to their CCR/G format so I could save it locally.
I also find it interesting that they are ready, willing and able to share my information with anyone THEY chose.
From the Agreement:
'11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions.
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.'
This along with the obvious lack of standardized vocabulary use in their user input choices; i.e. two separate yellow fever vaccines just because of a misspelling, doesn't give me a "warm fuzzy" feeling about putting any REAL Personal Health Information (PHI) on their site.
I get the impression that they have decided that they know all about IT design and failed to learn from the many years of research that has gone into the complexities of healthcare information systems.
After [Queensland] Australia's & other "Doctor Death" tragedies (in which doctors' many errors have left patients much worse off, or dead...) and other situations, in which doctors sexually abuse or just undulu fondle patients, as part of their "treatment" - a partly public online data base might be just what we need to help find & eradicate "bad" medical professionals.
...ie, to see if practitioners and/or hospitals need retraining or further investigation.
;-)
Let Google Health be modified to compile results of medical procedures - by the practitioner(s), who perform them - and compare longer-term performance with expected failure & complication rates across the hospital...
and then compare each hospital's rates to "best practice" -
We could also get very useful (even valuable) data on risks of working / living in certain areas, eg, by post code... if correlations between location and diseases are available to all via Google Health.
Mapping sources of pollutions & overlaying incidence rate contour lines onto the same maps, might affect property prices... giving folks another [if economic] reason to cleanup the mess before people would move to a new development/location.
Gov't-held data is already held & analyzed, around the world, to support such analyses; eg:
While in South Australia, attending a Data Mining seminar (atop the EDS building in Adelaide), I heard some public sector IT managers report how Data Mining - even in -existing- Public Health Service databases - showed useful patterns of disease occuramces vs postcode...
but another public sector IT manager was quick to poit out that such results would not be made known to members of the public.
(Tell me: Does this kind of data hiding happen in such places as Sweden? I hope not... but give me the facts & some URLs where they are available; yes, some of us read Swedish here...