Google Health Open Platform Is Great — Or Awful

JackPowers writes "The Google Health APIs enable portable, standardized, open architecture, extensible personal health records, which is nice but boring if they're just used to manage the paperwork of the doctor/patient relationship. But once the data is set free, all kinds of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 apps are possible. This article looks ahead 10 years at Best Case Scenarios. A follow-up article lists the Worst Case Scenarios."

Comments

Google is not to be trusted

[BadAnalogyGuy]

No private company should be so entrenched in society that it would be impossible to survive without the service they provide. If I can't get a job without a Google Health "badge", then something somewhere has gone horribly wrong.

This is already a big problem with credit companies becoming so pervasive. It's also bad enough that private companies are leading the American military around by the nose. But that pales in comparison to the actual, direct, and personal limits imposed by something like the system the article is talking about.

Re:Google is not to be trusted

[JCSoRocks]

That's the very point the OP was making. The credit companies are already ridiculous. Not, "yay credit companies! it's totally ok that they can ruin your life!"

Re:Google is not to be trusted

[niceone]

Yes, especially as in 10 years time it will probably still be Google Health beta.

Re:Google is not to be trusted

[value_added]

No private company should be so entrenched in society that it would be impossible to survive without the service they provide.

An insightful comment if ever I read one, but I'm afraid you're a few generations late. As a society we gave up believing in government, institutions of power or authority, religeon, civic responsibility and most all notions of tradition, and adopted instead a belief in individuality and self-fullfilment. That doesn't leave us with much, does it?

If the current trend continues and free market idealogues get to rule the day, we should expect to have everything from infrastructure to institutions ruled and run entirely by corporations (to the extent they don't already), and we'll all be working for Taco Bell or for The Brawndo Corporation.

The situation can also be viewed political terms. A good portion of the electorate really does believe that government is evil, that government can't possibly do anything as efficiently or as cheaply as business, and that taxes infringe on their God given rights, but they're only too happy to let the Walmarts of the world take over provided they can maintain the illusion they've kept a few extra dollars in their own pockets.

The people who complain about undue corporate influence on government probably don't notice that they've succumbed to those same influences in their own lives, but they might notice when there's nothing left to sell off, somebody else holds all the cards and those free-market choices they've been promised come up short.

Google, I think, is doing what any business does, and that's fulfulling an unmet need and making or trying to make a profit in doing so. The question is why we're not doing it ourselves?

Great, Web *3.0*

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Just what we need, more bullshit for buzzword fetishists.

Oh Hell

[Target Practice]

Web 3.0? What is that supposed to be? A LAMP application hooked up to a cage of weasels?

Re:Oh Hell

[TheRealFixer]

Correct. Except, the cage is also on rails.

The ideas are cool

[Oxy the moron]

But that doesn't mean they're good. Diet monitoring? Try this, or any other free web service that does it *without* needing your medical history. Fitness Monitoring? Doesn't Wii Fit do this? How about a simple spreadsheet? Travel? Is it that hard to look at The Weather Channel before you leave?

Honestly, this just sounds like candy-coating a terrible idea so that people will buy into it. None of the ideas on that page are lacking a non-Google implementation assuming you're not too lazy to do some footwork.

Then again, if you are too lazy, maybe whatever ill effects you receive from using Google's service are deserved...

Re:agreed with the worst case.

[ColdWetDog]

This is one of the most (potentially abused) systems I can forsee. I really don't think losing our privacy where medical records are concerned is going to help society. this just stinks. google should be ashamed.

Unless this is mandated by somebody or other, you're free to post or not post whatever you want on Google health.

That's fine, but it does severely limit the usefulness of the product. As a physician, I'm not going to be inclined to spend much time looking at a highly edited version of somebody's medical history. There is a reason we ask for records from doctors or hospitals. It's far too easy to simply edit out the uncomfortable bits of your life. That of course, is perfectly within your rights, but my job is too look at the whole history, not bits and pieces.

I don't see this as taking off much in the professional sector - it may be popular in the direct-to-consumer advertising space (which is why I cynically suspect it exists), but it's too limited to be much use professionally. Not useless, but very limited.

The truly scary part is that the "10 worst" scenarios are much more likely to come true that the "10 best".

worst case scenario?

[Red Flayer]

From the worst case scenarios:

PUBLIC HEALTH

Anonymized Google Health data is mined by Pleasantville public health officials to chart wellness patterns and develop health policy. Government commissions use the stats as the basis for regulating smoking, trans-fats, sugar and alcohol. Households with strong wellness metrics are eligible for tax rebates.

Sounds like a good idea to me. People with unhealthy lifestyles cost communities and bigger units (states, federal govt) a lot of money in emergency services, medicare costs, etc. I welcome the idea that those with healthy lifestyles shouldn't be subsidizing those with unhealthy lifestyles. Plus, there is then an obvious economic incentive to become healthier.

Seems like a win-win to me.

Re:worst case scenario?

[grassy_knoll]

What's next? Only approved food may be sold? Perhaps any non-vegan food is subject to confiscation and the owners subject to arrest?

Maybe we can ban alcohol nationally, since that worked so well last time.

Oh, I know. Mandatory exercise. Not running fast enough? Well, attack dogs are cheaper that what you're costing medicare, so enough with your rights.

The idea the economics of health care must trump individual rights leads to complete regulation and control of everyone's lives as a "cost saving measure". It's totalitarianism.

But I suspect you know that, since your sig line seems to indicate you're trolling.. if so, well done.

but you're an amateur

[Quadraginta]

You're thinking that it takes a physician the same time to read through your history and pluck out the important stuff that it would take you, a complete amateur with nearly zero understanding of how medicine works.

That's as logical as thinking that it would take Linus Torvalds as long to understand a kernel patch as J. Random User who's never coded a line in his life. Or that your car mechanic needs to carefully listen to every sound your jalopy makes to know whether it needs a valve job. Or that the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic would have to get out a tuning fork and go carefully around to listen to each of his 150 musicians to know whether the orchestra is playing in tune.

Re:agreed with the worst case.

[ColdWetDog]

If you are indeed a physician, where are you? I ask because here in the US there is absolutely no wau any physician I've ever met would take the time to read my entire medical history, because there is no way an insurance company would pay them to do it.

I'm in Alaska, come up and visit. Bring your harpoon....

"Taking the time to read your entire medical history" may or may not be particularly relevant. If you are young and healthy without significant ongoing issues, it may be perfectly unnecessary. I likely don't care about the details of your tonsilectomy at age 6 (I might, however, if you had a significant anesthetic reaction).

But you bring up a good point that's generally obfuscated in these debates: You may not want every detail of a person's medical history at any given time. Sometimes you do. Having to wade through tons of extraneous detail makes it easy to miss important tidbits. Getting a 200 page printout from a 6 day hospitalization with everything including the janitor's notes doesn't help me much. Putting that in machine readable format helps me maybe a bit. What we don't have is an underlying, consistent framework for electronic medical records that's used by everyone and has the capability to organize a huge amount of information into a generally usable format.

There are baby steps out there, but it's a huge chicken and egg problem for the field. I personally see the digitalization of medical records happening *very* slowly - over the next 20 years or so. And that's a feature, not a bug folks. There are absolutely huge societal issues to be dealt with before we give some uber-governmental department the holy grail of databases. I'd rather have the current fragmented system then allow every government and corporate entity start data mining for whatever purpose of the week they feel important (or profitable).

If Things Get Serious...?

[D Ninja]

From the "Good Things" article...

Ready to take their relationship to the next level, lovers Romeo and Juliet share STD status reports through their Google Health accounts. If things get serious, they'll open up their entire files to each other and compare genetic data when contemplating children. This doesn't seem like such a great thing to me. Here's the scenario I see...

Romeo and Juliet share STD data. They are both clean (or so the record says). Great. They can now enjoy sex with each other.

Then, over time, they decide that this relationship is really a great thing and they want to start looking into marriage. They get married. Everybody is happy.

Now that they're married (because nobody would be stupid enough to share this type of data BEFORE marriage...would they?), they share their genetic information with each other as they are talking about children. But, what's this?! Juliet sees that Romeo has a high propensity for Down Syndrome (or any other "disease" - take your pick). Well, this isn't good.

So, instead, Juliet decides to get a divorce and go on her merry way.

The End