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Medical Professionals Aren't Leaping For E-Medicine
theodp writes "Despite all the stimulus money being directed toward developing electronic medical records, surprisingly few doctors, hospitals and insurers are using Google Health and other sites like it. One reason, Newsweek suggests, may be that Web-based personal-health records like the ones being compiled on Google Health don't appear to be covered under HIPAA, which requires that health care providers and health plans protect patient confidentiality. 'We don't connect that information to other aspects of Google,' explains Dr. Roni Zeiger, product manager for Google Health. Still, the federal government is in the process of drafting privacy recommendations that would apply to Google Health, as well as the makers of consumer apps that perform tasks like monitoring blood pressure."
I wasn't even aware Google produced a product called Google Health.
I can understand their other technology developments, but this is one area where it's blatantly apparent that they just want to know a scary amount about each of their users...
So much of the medical diagnosis could be automated. Everything from image analysis to the various charts they read off.
I am aware that I may be pissing up a rope here. However.
I'm a physician, and I'd be happy to let every drug (except antibiotics) be over-the-counter. Kill yourself, make yourself better, get high - it's really no skin off my back. But good diagnosis is hard, and it's definitely not automatable except in the most trivial of situations. After all, if it were automated, you'd have a great product to sell to physicians who could then hire a vast cadre of nurses to do the patient interviews and generate the diagnoses, which they could then swoop in and bill for.