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Google Health's Lifeline Runs Out

turing0 writes "As a former bioinformatics researcher and CTO I have some sad news to start 2012 with. Though I am sure not a surprise to the Slashdot crowd, it appears we — or our demographic — made up more than 75% of the Google Health userbase. Today marks the end of Google Health. (Also see this post for the official Google announcement and lame excuse for the reasoning behind this myopic decision.) The decision of Google to end this excellent service is a fantastic example of what can represent the downside of cloud services for individuals and enterprises. The cloud is great when and while your desired application is present — assuming it's secure and robust — but you are at the mercy of the provider for longevity." (Read more, below.) turing0 continues: "I am surprised to see Google abandoning Google Health just when we can see the benefit to personal health when micro sensors such as the Nike Plus and Jawbone's UP bracelet are entering the market. Greater amounts of personal health data can be gathered now via smartphone and then turned into valuable preventative as well as useful diagnostic medical information.

Shuttering Google Health is a surprising and short-sighted decision on Google's behalf, IMHO. Perhaps closing the Google Health service is not 'Evil' per se — but given the immense magnitude of financial resources at Google I cannot believe Google Health will make a decimal place of impact on Google's operating costs. Services like Google Health are a fantastic public relations tool as well as an amazing potential source of raw scientific data if nothing else.

In closing, it's very funny to note Google suggests Google Health users migrate GH data to the Microsoft Health Vault. Hopefully some Web service other than Health Vault will rise from the ashes of Google Health. The real benefit in terms of Google being a custodian of my health and wellness records via Google Health was that Google as a corporation is considered a trustworthy intermediary by most users and health care professionals. Now I am not so sure; perhaps it's time to re-claim my email ..."

196 comments

  1. Google needs to focus on a few products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's why they are abandoning all these non-profitable things and focusing on the stuff that brings in the money: social (Google+), managed by Vic Gundotra and Android, lead by Andy "Hypocrite" Rubin.

    --
    There is a new arrogant asshole in town!

    1. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by SharkLaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That also means that everyone loses trust in Google's services. They just seem to cancel anything anytime they want. There was an earlier discussion about Native Client. Who's to say Google won't just drop it? Even Microsoft offers very specific end-of-lifecycle dates and they're always several years in to the future. With every version, too!

      I won't be trusting Google's services to stay up, and hence won't be using them either. I only use the ones I can afford to end randomly, like search and youtube.

    2. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is not unlike when they canceled Firefly, a few geeks are devastated, hardly anyone else notices.

    3. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Native client is slightly different. It's open source code, which is available online and could be forked if Google stopped their contributions to the project.

      Google Health on the other hand isn't open source and runs as a service on their servers. So pulling the plug really does pull the plug, and no code or data is freely available so it can't be forked.

    4. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by LostCluster · · Score: 1

      Google gave plenty of notice of the EOL of this service, and it's chief problem was that there was no sponsorship and nobody willing to pay for the service. Google was an unneeded middleman if health records, better records are collected by doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, and other health professionals.

    5. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even Microsoft offers very specific end-of-lifecycle dates and they're always several years in to the future. With every version, too!

      With Microsoft, you're the customer. With Google, you're the product.

    6. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That also means that everyone loses trust in Google's free services.

      There, fixed that for you.

      Seriously - did turing0 like this "excellent" service enough to be willing to pay for it? If so, did he ever write Google and suggest it move to a for-fee model? After all, we had quite a bit of warning this was going to happen.

      Reading the rest of turing0's post, though... it's obvious what he wants is for Google to continue to provide this service at no cost to himself - "given the immense magnitude of financial resources at Google I cannot believe Google Health will make a decimal place of impact on Google's operating costs."

      Heck, I'd be irritated if Google decided to discontinue Gmail - but I'd recognize it's their right to do so, given I'm not paying a dime for it (directly, anyway - and I don't believe Google Health could be contextual-ad-supported in the same way, what with FIPAA and all).

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    7. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by eneville · · Score: 0

      They just seem to cancel anything anytime they want. There was an earlier discussion about Native Client. Who's to say Google won't just drop it? Even Microsoft offers very specific end-of-lifecycle dates and they're always several years in to the future. With every version, too!

      They're free to cancel anything they want, whenever they want. It's their service that you're not paying for.

      I won't be trusting Google's services to stay up, and hence won't be using them either. I only use the ones I can afford to end randomly, like search and youtube.

      I don't trust any provider. All web/mail etc is hosted by myself. If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.

    8. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 1
      There is something suspect about this phrase in the summary:

      ...it appears we -- or our demographic -- made up more than 75% of the Google Health userbase.

      Why is that? Are you all self-absorbed Lysol-huffing hypochondriacs who need to be told to put down the Cheetoes and get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day?

      Preventative care is common sense. If something really bad pops up, having health insurance, not Google Health, is what's gonna save your ass.

    9. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by hedwards · · Score: 1

      It would have been nice if they would have released the source code for the service under some sort of open license. There's definitely a need for a service like that, it's just a question of whether it makes any sense for Google to provide it or not. I'm sure there are plenty of organizations that would have been willing to adopt it for their own use.

    10. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by hedwards · · Score: 0

      Why don't you say that correlation is not causation while you're repeating catch phrases of low value.

      Google isn't selling people, they're selling access to a small amount of screen real estate that they hope you'll look at. All this absurd Google's selling people BS really needs to stop because it's completely unhelpful.

    11. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Stan92057 · · Score: 1

      Why not offer it up for a fee first? If the product is worth the money people will use it. Why should he expect the service for anything other then free? What products do they charge for? I was paying for google earth for the extras included but then they stopped that service and just continued with the free Google Earth. No Google is clearly untrustable at anything other then advertising and search.

      --
      Jack of all trades,master of none
    12. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html

      "6/24/2011 11:01:00 AM
      In the coming months, we’re going to retire two products that didn’t catch on the way we would have hoped, but did serve as influential models: Google Health (retiring January 1, 2012; data available for download through January 1, 2013)"

      EOL dates a pretty clear here.

    13. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They also canceled google Linux search, they are under new managemrpent

    14. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

      Google isn't selling people.

      Microsoft makes most of their money selling things for which end users, be they businesses or individuals, pay real money. Microsoft Office, Xbox, stuff like that. Their customers are their users. Microsoft's aggressive activity is generally aimed at competitors.

      Google sells ads, and information about and access to their users. Google's customers are almost entirely (94% of revenue) advertisers. Google's aggressive activity is aimed at their users. When Microsoft got into serious legal trouble, it was over their behavior towards competitors. When Google got into serious legal trouble, it was about their behavior towards users. See the DOJ non-prosecution agreement in the pharmacy case.

    15. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to be incredibly stupid to give Google all your health information. Which explains why the slashdot demographic is all over it.

    16. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by icebraining · · Score: 1

      I don't trust any provider. All web/mail etc is hosted by myself

      So, how are those peering agreements with Level3 et all going? Or do you use someone else's ISP?

      The key to using this stuff is not to roll your own, it's to turn them into commodity parts. If your ISP shuts you down, you can simply contract with another - the "tubes" are interchangeable.

      Likewise, if my Gmail or LDHosting accounts close, I'm only down for the time it takes to copy the data from backups and update the DNS records.

      The key thing is to interface with standards (IMAP, SFTP, etc) and not with proprietary protocols and APIs that can't be easily replaced.

    17. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by icebraining · · Score: 1

      No, it's because our demographic is the only one who heard of the product.

    18. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Google sells... information about and access to their users.

      i wish people would stop with the misleading FUD. Google does not sell information about Animats, Google sells information about the demographic subgroups that Animats might happen to belong to, but the customer (business advertising departments) do not get Animats' information.

      if they did, my job (PI) would be a shit-ton easier. i wish they did.

    19. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Citation necessary. Google sells ad space, they do not sell information about users, which is definitely something to keep in mind. They do not guarantee that users will read the ads nor do they guarantee that the ads will even be seen by anybody.

    20. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by hedwards · · Score: 0

      No, I didn't affirm what the GGP said. I'm not an employee and I'm not a fanboy. I'm just a fan of people making factually correct statements.

      Google doesn't guarantee that any particular individual will see the ads, nor do they sell information they gather. Additionally, they don't force people to see the ads, just because they're up doesn't mean that a person will scroll down or click on the links.

      The sorts of bullshit comments that the GGP posted aren't particularly helpful as they bare little to no resemblance to reality.

    21. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Kalriath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, you're wrong there. Google sells access (for advertisers) to an extremely large pool of people whom use Google services. Google does not sell anything to that pool of people. While it might be slightly disingenuous to say that the pool of people is the product, they most certainly are not the customers.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    22. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Why would people record their health care record in a service like this? I can see keeping a private record for myself but this is sensitive information that people do not want spread around. I can see the benefits of crossing this information privately and allowing health care providers access to this but there is an element of trust that must be established first. For something like this Google should have made a serious long term commitment no matter what. Anyone think political pressure may be at play or possible lawsuit threats? People in the tech industry have made attempts in the past to change health care for the better but all have died.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    23. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by thesh0ck · · Score: 1

      Without the pool of people there would be no advertising to sell, thus the pool of people is just as important as the advertisers. Thus they are BOTH customers.

    24. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by seandoyle44 · · Score: 1
      I don't think that HIPAA or fees had much to do with it. HIPAA's focus is on healthcare providers and their business associates. Google Health was the patient's repository and there's no restriction on what the patient does with their records after they have been given them by their providers.
      I stopped following Google Health a few years ago. I might have the details wrong - it's been a while since I thought about them:
      1. I never understood their security model. If I remember correctly - you could give people access to particular results but you couldn't (for example) put in a rule that said "Always share my blood test results and medications with person X". You could share them explicitly after they were added - but it's easy to forget to do this.
      2. The mechanisms for input/output were awkward. They supported a subset of the ASTM's CCR. One of the things that they stripped out was the Source element - so a physician would never know the origin of a particular observation. This wasn't very useful. They also stripped out identifiers in the CCR that third parties could have used for synchronization of observations. Perhaps observations could have been matched up by date/time and values - but since they had also simplified how observations could be recorded it just wasn't a very platform-friendly design.
      3. The search/sort mechanisms for data were very awkward. It was more of a repository of documents than it was a database for medical observations. This make it awkward to build services on.
      4. I don't know anyone that could explain their business model to me. I know that it confused many people at several hospitals that spoke with.

      I wish that Google had done something deeper and more interesting here - the healthcare industry certainly could use a shakeup. If they offered something compelling I'm sure they could have charged for it and had a business of sorts.
      I suspect (but this is pure speculation) that they really wanted do to the right thing with patient privacy but they couldn't figure out how to structure a system that protected patients while providing a healthcare/business model that hospitals and primary care providers trusted. Anything that was of sufficient power to build a good platform from probably was too complex for patients to handle. By handle here I don't mean that they couldn't use it - but they probably would make mistakes that would be embarrassing for them or that might expose google to some legal liability.
      For example - apparently some state laws permit parents to have complete access to their children's medical records. But when the medical treatment starts to have anything to do with the sexual activity of the minor (say - birth control pills) the parent's no longer have automatic access. Suppose that the system was designed perfectly but then the family moved to another state with different rules. I'm not saying that this couldn't be built - but it's not a trivial effort and I don't know how the costs/liabilities get distributed.
      I would love Google to jump into medical informatics in a big way but it's a big commitment to something that is outside of the search and advertising industries. A product that could link primary care providers, hospitals, and patients together would be huge. I don't know where the insurance companies would fit in here - I'd prefer single payer (!) - but I think Google would need to build something of at least national scale and there's a lot of interests to be balanced.
      I think that Google Health was a test - a small perturbation to the existing system and they wanted to see what would happen. I'm guessing that they learned it was a big mess :-).

    25. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by hedwards · · Score: 1

      It's not slightly disingenuous, it completely distorts the relationship and implies that there are things going on which aren't going on. I'm no more the product of Google than I am the product of say the New York Times print edition or the New Yorker.

      Claiming that Google is selling me requires some amount of evidence that the GGP hasn't provided.

    26. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by makomk · · Score: 1

      Native Client's really hairy open-source code that does clever things with segments, page flags and static analysis of x86 code. Also, I'm not sure there's that many people outside of Google that have even ported code to it, yet alone worked on the internals.

    27. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correction. Microsoft did and does harm consumers directly and indirectly. See the US vs Microsoft. Take your time to actually read the findings of fact. Microsoft generally protects their products (Windows, Office) and their monopoly position that brought/bring them their profits. Here's Charlie Kindel, former microsoft, take on why windows phone 7 didn't take off:

      Users: Own the disposable income. They are highly influenced by advertising. All they know is they buy phone service from mobile carriers and/or buy a phone from a carrier. They love speeds & feeds and will generally buy anything they are told to by television ads and RSPs (Retail Sales Professionals).

      Does this look like they really care about customers or their choices? Not really. They do care about their product though. See the legal nonsense they go through, the bogus patent claims, the astroturfing etc they do to protect their product and their brand name. If only they did half of that to protect the consumer and consumer choice as Google does, they might actually have some traction.

      But I guess with your theory, being the product has more advantages than actually being the customer in this capitalistic world too?

    28. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Google management had serious meetings with Steve Jobs last year. He told them to concentrate on what they do best, and focus on it. He told them to drop everything else.

      So perhaps that is the reason GH is being dropped.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    29. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by orasio · · Score: 1

      Without the cow, there would be no beef to sell, thus the cattle is just as important as the consumers. Thus they are BOTH customers.

    30. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by HappyPsycho · · Score: 1

      1/2 a year warning that the service will stop receiving new data (announcement was sent out June 24th 2011) and another year to transition to another platform (January 1 2013). How is that no warning?

      Unlike most other cloud providers they are actually providing a (very easy) transition route, heck they are even giving direction on how to transition to one of their competitors.

      What I laugh about these comments is you seem to forget what Google said about chrome, "We want to create a better internet, if we are running is that's nice, if not that's cool too". In what way is Google suited to run such a service? Geeks have to have some of the worst health practices I can think of. What I find ironic is all the criticism that is being thrown at Google while none is thrown at the health care providers, why did it take someone like Google to create such a service when your health care provider can provide all of what Google provided and more. What google did was show what can be done, in this case they decided they are not the best group to run such an operation, they hire doctorates but I'm pretty sure very few MDs.

      And here's another consideration for the conspiracy theorist, there are already lots of people saying Google knows too much about them. Maybe the lawsuits over Google health isn't one they want to start, maybe google health isn't a victim of some accountants trying to save a few bucks so much as the threat of aggressive lawyers after allot of bucks.

    31. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by cdrguru · · Score: 1

      While I suspect it isn't widely disseminated, Google certainly collects enourmous amounts of valuable marketing data. They would be passing up a huge opportunity if they did not make this available, certainly on an aggregated basis.

      For example, I suspect if I had plenty of money that I could find out which appeared more frequently in GMail communications traffic: iPhone or Android. It might make a huge difference in spending for allocating development dollars, enough that spending $100K with Google might be worth it. They have this information on hand and part of the deal with GMail is your email will be examined for such things.

      Google recently noticed that they collected the MAC addresses of every router all over the world. If I was in the router building (or router selling) business it might be interesting to know how many D-Link routers there are in affluent zip codes vs. Belkin. Google has this information and I gotta believe they are willing to sell it.

      Search trend data is already pretty publicly available, so I don't think that counts. However, could you get it broken down by zip code? How accurate might that zip code really be? It would be enourmously interesting if they had a better geolocation for a user than could be obtained from the ISP-provided IP address.

    32. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      You don't disagree however that you aren't Google's customer, and that what Google sells is access to you (among billions of others)?

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    33. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by konmpar · · Score: 1

      With Microsoft, you're the customer..

      Wondering, for how long its going to stay that way?

      --
      //LIFE WOULD BE EASIER IF I HAD THE SOURCE CODE!
    34. Re:Google needs to focus on a few products by pionzypher · · Score: 1

      I'm just a fan of people making factually correct statements.

      You must be new h.... ah, forget it.

      --
      I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
  2. Google's lack of focus by bonch · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Another day, another Google service bites the dust. At this rate, they're set to outdo Microsoft in the number of obsoleted APIs and services that they use to pull the rug out from under people. And why shouldn't they? We're not the customers. Advertisers are, and if a service isn't helping Google's advertisers, they're not interested in keeping it around.

    1. Re:Google's lack of focus by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Well, Google can't sell you for much if they know you are going to die in a couple of weeks...other than to sugar-pill-vending "we can fix any ailment you have" companies.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    2. Re:Google's lack of focus by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Had you actually heard about Google Health before today? Be honest.

      And if you had, what would your level of interest be in handing over your health records to google?

      Thats why this cancellation is really not any surprise at all.

    3. Re:Google's lack of focus by timeOday · · Score: 2

      At this rate, they're set to outdo Microsoft in the number of obsoleted APIs and services that they use to pull the rug out from under people.

      Oh, you don't think Microsoft maintains ENOUGH legacy support? Wow. I don't think there's anybody out there who supports as much legacy hardware and as many legacy APIs as Microsoft. In fact I think that's the key to their niche in marketplace - it takes tens of thousands of programmers to carry as much cruft as they do, which is hard to duplicate.

  3. New to me by crawforc3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the first time I've heard of Google Health.

    1. Re:New to me by 1s44c · · Score: 1

      This is the first time I've heard of Google Health.

      Same here. I'm wondering how many other services google offer that we don't know about.

    2. Re:New to me by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 1

      And how many they've cancelled without the majority of internet users finding out

    3. Re:New to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how many they've cancelled without the majority of internet users finding out

      GOOG-411, bitch. You used to be able to call Google's phone number and be able to converse with a computer to get your search results.They disconected the phone number, but you can still "voice search" from your android phone which uses data instead of minutes. Hmm.

      At least microsoft still has BING-411

    4. Re:New to me by mrmeval · · Score: 0

      They could not figure out how to convince your heart to terrify you into using the products of they ads they'd send to your heart so they're just going to let your heart wither and die all alone in the vastness of meat that is you.

      --
      I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
    5. Re:New to me by imp7 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When I was working for a pharmacy chain back in 2007/08ish, and I got to see a presentation on Google Heath at a conference. Our software provider was partnering with Google to import all your prescription information into Google Health in real time. At the time the idea of being able to have several different pharmacies, doctor offices, and hospitals put your information into a central "electronic health record" was being pushed by Obama's campaign to lower health care costs and save lives. There was money to be had.

      Of course this would be an extremely valuable service for Google, but medical industry is very powerful and clouded by federal laws. As we move forward, electronic health records are still right around the corner and someone will make all the money. I doubt there will be more then one private entity storing your data, but then again it could be like Medicare D and you have to choose from 20+ companies.

      (By the way, the presentation on Google Health was the best and most professional presentation I've ever seen. They hire pros for real.)

    6. Re:New to me by Kalriath · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Microsoft (or rather Bing) does tend to launch counters to pretty much every Google service and then proceed to refuse to close them when Google closes theirs. Translate API is another example of that.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    7. Re:New to me by Kalriath · · Score: 2

      But did they give out shiny pens and have scantily clad women doing the presentation? That seems to be how most healthcare vendors sell their products these days.

      (Disclaimer: I actually work in healthcare. I've seen some of the shit solutions that come of this sales methodology).

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    8. Re:New to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      me too

    9. Re:New to me by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 1

      That people are stupid is not the fault of healthcare providers. Clearly this causes people to buy. In case you're confused, it means they want this.

    10. Re:New to me by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      Er, you mistake me. The healthcare providers are the ones being sold to that are buying into these tactics, not the public. It's the sort of strategy that results in things like critical business applications being outsourced to GoDaddy (as an example, I hope this doesn't actually happen).

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    11. Re:New to me by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 1

      Ironically google apparently outsources dns to godaddy.

    12. Re:New to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      New to me too. Perhaps if they had promoted it and advertised it properly, they could have obtained some more revenue from the service and public exposure. It is pretty stupid from Google to blame the service itself.

      Another sad thing is that Hammer Time was the 90's and Google Time were the 00's. It is over. Now Google is just another behemoth trying to make it out there. Don't get me wrong I alwasy knew that the "hippie-ish" ways of Google had to end someday. But one thing it to turn into a more for-profit organization, not continuing with the products or services that are not strategic, and a different one is to make dumb decisions. OK, now you cannot have a service running that does not generate revenue, I understand, but for it to be profitable you need to advertise it and promote it. Apparently that 20% of employee time dedicated to innovation, and the 60 hour per week average they put in, does not allow for much thinking any more.

  4. not surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The health marke it is extreeeeeeemly fickle. They jump at every electronic fad that comes along (I know I used to work in this area). One day they are willing to drop 200k on something the next they will not take your call because they have a better toy.

    I have seen doctors spend 150k on a system. Then be willing to only buy the cheapest black and white monitor they can buy that they will use every day because it costs 2 dollars less than a color one.

    So google figured it out. This area hemoreges money when no one wants to pay for it. But everyone wants it...

    1. Re:not surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The health market is almost entirely database-driven: it's all medical records of one sort or another. Patient charts, billing codes, etc: it's just databases. The database end is complex due to absurdly complicated standards, but also because systems have proprietary data stores that don't talk to other systems well. The worst part, though, is the user interfaces: most industries have UI's that don't suck, but health never seemed to get this right. The database engineers have been designing the UI's forever.

      There's a brilliant market here for someone with the vision to combine Apple-quality system integration and UI with a narrow focus on the healthcare industry. Whoever does it is going to sell their product for cheaps to a bunch of doctors and become a defacto standard.

    2. Re:not surprising by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      The health market is almost entirely database-driven: it's all medical records of one sort or another. Patient charts, billing codes, etc: it's just databases. The database end is complex due to absurdly complicated standards, but also because systems have proprietary data stores that don't talk to other systems well. The worst part, though, is the user interfaces: most industries have UI's that don't suck, but health never seemed to get this right. The database engineers have been designing the UI's forever.

      There's a brilliant market here for someone with the vision to combine Apple-quality system integration and UI with a narrow focus on the healthcare industry. Whoever does it is going to sell their product for cheaps to a bunch of doctors and become a defacto standard.

      You're largely correct but the biggest problem is that even at an Enterprise level, it is a cottage industry. Everyone has different processes. What works well for one system is an absolute disaster in another. Hell, what works on one floor of a hospital doesn't work on another.

      It's very frustrating.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:not surprising by Kalriath · · Score: 2

      As the developer of a Patient Management System, I agree completely there. Our code is littered with location dependent workarounds for individual business units doing things differently one way or another for no apparent reason.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    4. Re:not surprising by Krishnoid · · Score: 1

      You're largely correct but the biggest problem is that even at an Enterprise level, it is a cottage industry. Everyone has different processes. What works well for one system is an absolute disaster in another. Hell, what works on one floor of a hospital doesn't work on another.

      It's very frustrating.

      Is this a US issue? How does this play out in countries with socialized medical systems? To what extent are the records centrally stored and/or standardized in other countries?

    5. Re:not surprising by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 1

      Oh you don't know. You only have to be compatible with one system. A Sun system that is older than I am, to be exact.

      In fact I know one country that pays $100k for every single healthcare computer, because it's the only approved model their software runs on (which is still in development, using mainframe development tools). Today they have to be custom made one-by-one. Thank God they've at least used an emulator for the storage of things like pictures and scans, so actual hard drives can be used (well 16G, but hey. That's modern for these guys)

      It's a case of pick your poison, I guess.

  5. Hippa by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    How can goolge even have some like that under hippa laws much less sell ad's based on data in it.

    1. Re:Hippa by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      HIPPA doesn't apply to information you give hem.

    2. Re:Hippa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Only because people are silly and stupid and provide information freely without knowing the downside of doing so. This project by Google should never have been started in the first place by Google. While there are benefits to gathering information this wasn't it.

    3. Re:Hippa by markdavis · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is "HIPAA", not "HIPPA", and yes it most certainly DOES apply to information you give to a company :)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_health_information

    4. Re:Hippa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps if you knew what HIPAA was (starting with how to spell it) you might understand the many ways it doesn't apply to Google Health.

    5. Re:Hippa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      See "covered entity":
      https://www.cms.gov/HIPAAGenInfo/06_AreYouaCoveredEntity.asp

    6. Re:Hippa by markdavis · · Score: 1

      Very good point!
      But just about any entity that deals with Medicare is a covered entity. And if even one of those covered entities submits PHI to Google, directly, then they would have to obtain a "HIPAA Business Associate" contract with Google.

      http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/coveredentities/businessassociates.html

      Which doesn't make Google a covered entity, but does start to throw heavy responsibility and possible regulations their way. Of course, as with lots of HIPAA stuff, it is open to interpretation. That said, I am sure Google had an army of lawyers looking at this stuff.

      But I did want to directly refute the original poster- it doesn't matter if the company you are dealing with generated the information. Even information YOU supply to them (a covered entity, or one under a business associate agreement) becomes PHI (protected health information).

    7. Re:Hippa by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2

      Maybe I should have put a [sic] after HIPPA since that's how the original post had it.

      Either way:
      - a health care provider that conducts certain transactions in electronic form (called here a "covered health care provider").
      - a health care clearinghouse.
      - a health plan.

      Which one of those is Google? If a reporter comes to my hospital and asks the doctors "Does he have cancer?" it would be a violation of HIPAA to give them the answer.

      If I ran down the hallway screaming "I have cancer! I have cancer!" It would not be a violation for any of those people to spread the word. Same goes for Myspace, Facebook, or in this case, Google.

    8. Re:Hippa by seandoyle44 · · Score: 1

      I don't think that Google Health was a covered entity. They were the patient's proxy. PHRs are not regulated by HIPPA.

  6. I wanted it, signed up for it... by coolate · · Score: 1

    But I never really used it, so as bad as I feel to see it go, to be honest, I had no real need for it. Maybe later it will be reborn....

    1. Re:I wanted it, signed up for it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, I had signed up too. In my case, I was hoping it would be a good place to store and analyze my treadmill runs and other workouts. But, it really wasn't targeted at that. In fact, I couldn't figure out any use for it so my account just sat there unused. Google has sent me several emails about the upcoming shutdown, so they certainly gave lots of warning. But I still don't know what the service was actually supposed to help me with.

  7. Just pay more by Colin+Smith · · Score: 2

    I'm sure Google would be willing to keep the service running if you were willing to pay for it.
     

    --
    Deleted
    1. Re:Just pay more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God damn, this!

      What the hell is with ditching services entirely?
      I would actually pay to keep services alive.

      I can't wait for the P2P age. To hell with the cloud. A solid P2P network where people can set up services with even more ease than we do now (Tor) will be so much better than this crappy age of the internet.

    2. Re:Just pay more by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 1

      I can't wait for the P2P age. To hell with the cloud. A solid P2P network where people can set up services with even more ease than we do now (Tor) will be so much better than this crappy age of the internet.

      I agree with you 110%. It has to happen, because all we seem to be doing now is recentralizing everything the Internet (and personal computing in general) promised to liberate.

      Of course, we can expect the coming "P2P age" to be fought as if it the Nazis had allied with the Mongol hordes and were invading with a cavalry of bears.

      Internet 1.0 caught the Establishment napping. Internet 2.0 is going to find guards at the gates, and plenty of them... awake, alert, and armed to the teeth.

    3. Re:Just pay more by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I can't wait for the P2P age. To hell with the cloud.

      Become a node on a mesh network, or you will indeed need to wait, and wait, and wait... The only way we'll get a P2P age is to make it happen.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Just pay more by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1

      I would actually pay to keep services alive.

      I doubt it. You are a most likely a cheapskate who expects everything for free. So live with it.

      A solid P2P network where people can set up services with even more ease than we do now.

      Yeah so you can leach off other people's resources. You wouldn't be willing to pay for that either.

      --
      Deleted
  8. Companies so big are extremely unpredictable by Wabbble · · Score: 2

    The load of money they have moving contains quite a few secrets which together make everything, very, very unpredictable. They tell us one thing and do other. Call me paranoid, but keep an eye out for any low-profit services that you use because you never really know when they are going to be shut down. Whether a huge company running it or not.

  9. Tech-savvy people less valuable to Google? by Mannfred · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One way of interpreting the decision is that Google is finding it hard to make money off tech-savvy people (who probably use adblockers and can tell the difference between sponsored links and actual search results, etc).

  10. They give you a year to get your data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In several different standard formats, not just presentation formats like PDF (which wouldn't have been very useful). Have to give them credit for that.

    1. Re:They give you a year to get your data by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 1

      No kidding. I've gotten 3 emails in the last week telling me to export my data or lose it.

  11. Lack of Impact by sirdude · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Quoting http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html :

    In the end, while we weren’t able to create the impact we wanted with Google Health, we hope it has raised the visibility of the role of the empowered consumer in their own care.

    Considering the fact that I - somebody who in many ways spends more time on the Internet than off it - have not heard about this interesting service until today, I seriously doubt that the problem is that there haven't been enough takers. Yes, it sounds a touch megalomaniacal. But my conclusion is that Google has simply just not raised awareness about this product. With the amount of faeces being thrown all over the interwebz for other products such as Google Plus, I dare say that a small fraction of the resources expended could have saved initiatives such as Google Health from flatlining ...

    1. Re:Lack of Impact by vlm · · Score: 1

      other products such as Google Plus

      From what little I've found, it looks like G+ could adsorb google health and keep on going? Much like contacts and profiles and blogger and latitude and probably other stuff have kind of merged in.

      I'd be careful, though, with which circles get which posts. Maybe the mighty goog is rolling out tagged data, like data input as medical records can only be read by people tagged as medical professionals...

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    2. Re:Lack of Impact by stephanruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I seriously doubt that the problem is that there haven't been enough takers. Yes, it sounds a touch megalomaniacal. But my conclusion is that Google has simply just not raised awareness about this product.

      As a former user of the service, I'm actually not that surprised.

      Out of all the health services I was personally using, the only service that reliably plugged into it was my Walgreens pharmacy. Of course, my doctor could have used it himself, but I didn't even ask. Ever since I've migrated to the US from France, I've given up asking non-French doctors to fill out my medical blue book (my medical blue book contains all the medical records I've had since I was a baby, I do not know if they still use it in France now, but I love having all my medical information summarized and centralized in one thing that I actually have control over).

      For me Google Health was just like a big empty spreadsheet that I needed to fill out manually (except for my medication information which could get automatically imported from my pharmacy). I just didn't see any immediate pay off in taking the time of entering that data in it. May be, if I ever have a kid, it might be cool to start keeping something like that from the very first day of his birth (or even sooner, by recording the prenatal care the mother is given), to later give it to him for his information, but for me personally, it just isn't worth it unless my insurance or my doctor's office started participating in it as well (otherwise, I'd just end up duplicating a lot of information manually without a real reason for it otherwise, or just start using something like Excel/Google Docs instead).

    3. Re:Lack of Impact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quoting http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html :

      In the end, while we weren’t able to create the impact we wanted with Google Health, we hope it has raised the visibility of the role of the empowered consumer in their own care.

      Considering the fact that I - somebody who in many ways spends more time on the Internet than off it - have not heard about this interesting service until today, I seriously doubt that the problem is that there haven't been enough takers. Yes, it sounds a touch megalomaniacal. But my conclusion is that Google has simply just not raised awareness about this product. With the amount of faeces being thrown all over the interwebz for other products such as Google Plus, I dare say that a small fraction of the resources expended could have saved initiatives such as Google Health from flatlining ...

      Maybe you should have read the entire post - especially the bit about Direct Project instead of twisting the facts to suit your distorted version of reality.

    4. Re:Lack of Impact by Splab · · Score: 1

      I'd never heard of google health before, but I guess it's because here in Denmark, the service is build into our public healthcare.

      Any medicine taken in your lifetime (that requires perscription) is registered automatically and can be pulled using your social ID and your "nem id" (password + onetime keypad).

  12. Small reference pool by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 0

    It's just that not enough people are sick.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  13. Was it "mint" for health? by vlm · · Score: 1

    So I've heard google health described in the past as pretty much mint.com but for health records instead of finance records.

    1) Is that even remotely close?

    2) What is the goog equivalent of mint.com WRT finance?

    I could see if goog isn't going to compete with mint in the finance aggregation arena, and obviously GH is flushed, so maybe they are not interesting in being in the general aggregation market?

    A side question, since supposedly there are /. readers who used GH, could you specify what actionable items you'd done with G.H.? Not what data they want or you gave, not their business model, not theoretically this and that, but what actual actionable things happened? I'm thinking in terms of impact on my life, I'm not missing much with the end of GH.

    A close side question is I can't figure out on line how a PHR makes money, other than vendor lockin tied with corporate contracts. Follow the money! Are they selling records, deep in the fine print, or selling statistical/demographic data, or spamming ads, or ...

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    1. Re:Was it "mint" for health? by stevedog · · Score: 1

      That last question is probably exactly why it closed. Remember that Health came out quite some time ago, back before Google's recent series of privacy fiascos. They probably thought they'd be able to get away with completely anonymizing the data (even more so than with search) then using it for ads. After all the Buzz, wifi-gathering, etc., though, legal probably gave that a big "hell no." With the original business model killed, maybe they were hoping they would get vendors that would pay to plug data into or pull data out of Health once it got some momentum (or maybe this was the original plan all along), or maybe hoped hospitals would want to use it in an enterprise, Google Apps kind of way... but nobody significant really took the bait. Either way, as others have pointed out, whatever the plan for ultimately monetizing this was, clearly it didn't work out. I agree, though, with the general sentiment: a universal PHR would've been a great step forward in health IT, and it is very sad to see one of the most promising prospects for that fade to blak. If you've worked in health IT at all, you know that this is a field that desperately needs a breath of fresh air.

  14. Eh? by ledow · · Score: 1

    Had never heard of it (despite using a lot of Labs stuff).
    Nobody I asked had ever heard of it.
    Wouldn't use it if I had.
    Nobody I asked would have used if it they had.
    Nothing that can't be replicated elsewhere, by the look of it.

    You can bias the summary as much as you like and call it a myopic decision but I'd much rather they spent the money on something I'm likely to use or see being used at least.

    If an ENTIRE Google service can pass myself, and others just as technical, by until its closure then it's quite obvious that it wasn't as good as you thought it was.

    Suggesting that I tie in data-recording bracelets and god-knows-what into Google as a business model is just stupid before you even start, too, and its potential as diagnostician is about as good as Wii Fit, I imagine (and if it isn't, probably leads into all sorts of legal implications).

    If you want your raw scientific data, then gather it scientifically, not letting Google get spammed with it and then expecting them to pay. Do your research, collect your own fecking data (it's not like you couldn't) and set up a similar and better service if you think it's so useful. Personally, without looking, I think either a) 200 such things already exist and are never used or b) you'd be the first and still it'd never be used.

    P.S. Never heard of Microsoft Health Vault either but as far as I'm concerned they can piss all their money away on whatever gimmicks they like - that's what they've always done.

  15. The Cloud prevents user control by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 2
    Web-based services (aka, 'Cloud' services) are convenient and have a lot of advantages (which I won't repeat here unless asked).

    One big thing is that the server-side has all the control. I find this great for me as a service provider. This is one reason companies love providing these services.

    However, as a user of various services I realise I have no control. If the services I rely on were to disappear tomorrow there is nothing I can do about it and I'm totally powerless to stop it. The service provided may even be profitable for a provider but if it is not proftable *enough*, or there are cost cutting mesures being done by corporate head-office then the service can be axed. Even if the service is critcal to my business

    So the lesson to be learned is the same point made by the Free Software advocates. If software is critical to yourself or your business then you must ensure you have complete *control* of the software, all the way down to having the right to modify the source code if you need to. The convience of web-based services will never compensate for the loss of control. It is a strategic business decision to make: control (the long-term strategic view) or convenience (the short-term tactical view). I fully expect lots of sob stories like this to appear until the vendors start pitching back to CIOs that they could regain control by bringing stuff in-house again (for a fee, of course). Using Cloud services is no different to the 'offshoring' fad that the wise avoided for critical capabilities, followed by the realision that it doesn't always work and the resulting 'onshoring' renormalization. Expect a term like 'in-housing' or something similar to appear in trade rags in a couple of years.

    Whatever you do: don't lose control of your critical software and services (and use Free Software!).

  16. Why do people love Firefly? by F69631 · · Score: 0

    I recently watched a few episodes, just to see what it was about. I love both scifi and steampunk, so I should be the target audience for a space western like that. It was... OK, I guess. The acting and writing were mediocre (A bit too many cliches, etc. but tolerable) and the special effects were OK (when taking into account the budget constraints they probably had). The setting itself was nice, though there wasn't that much originality if you're already well familiar with the genre. Really, it was on par with Farscape: I wouldn't change the channel when it's on but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it to a friend.

    So I found myself wondering... why do some people love it so much? Is there some specific aspect of the show that they consider well made or what?

    1. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

      So I found myself wondering... why do some people love it so much? Is there some specific aspect of the show that they consider well made or what?

      Nah, we just really want to have a new show to rally around and identify with (like "Star Trek" once was). Its merits or lack thereof are irrelevant; It's just that is was there, not totally crap, and on prime-time TV...

    2. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is there some specific aspect of the show that they consider well made or what?

      I, for one, loved the sets, they felt quite cozy. But that's just me.

      Also, seeing that you called the acting and writing mediocre, I stipulate that you have no soul.

    3. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by hedwards · · Score: 2

      Most likely that means it wasn't for you. I've been watching a lot of shows lately that were canceled or otherwise ended early. The State, The Tick, Brisco County, Dilbert etc., and they were good shows that for one reason or another only lasted for a season or two worth of shows. The problem ultimately is that it's hard to say at what point a show should be canceled. It's easy to assume that they'll continue indefinitely when much of the time they don't, you end up with a show like The Simpsons or Family Guy that continues past the point of being funny and becomes kind of a drudge to watch, if you even bother.

      Services are largely the same way, sometimes Google cancels them before anybody knows what they're for, like wave, and other times they let them go too long. I get the feeling that health was probably a matter of the latter.

    4. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I liked Summer Glau's portrayal of a sensitive damaged girl with subconsciously trained fighting or psychic abilities that would kick in at random times. I also liked Sarah Conner Chronicles because I liked watching her as a terminator.

    5. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Angostura · · Score: 1

      You say that the writing was mediocre, I'd argue that it was actually very good. The episodes did vary, however and followed an arc, so I suppose if you only saw a couple, you might not have seen it at its best.

    6. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by icebraining · · Score: 1

      Agreed, but on the other hand, I find that's true for almost all SF TV shows.

    7. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      I liked Summer Glau's portrayal of a sensitive damaged girl with subconsciously trained fighting or psychic abilities that would kick in at random times. I also liked Sarah Conner Chronicles because I liked watching her as a terminator.

      TL;DR: Summer Glau == fap fap fap fap

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    8. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

      Yep, just look at the OP's comment: "it was on par with Farscape". However, IIRC, Farscape was already gone when Firefly came along.

      Imagine if they made a new sci-fi TV show, and sci-fi fans complained that "it's only on par with ST:TNG but with better fx". Would that not be reason alone to watch it (assuming you liked TNG)? It's not like they're still making TNG episodes after all. Do people really expect every new TV show or movie to be so much better than everything that came in the past? That's a pretty ridiculous expectation.

      The problem with sci-fi is that there just isn't much available that's good. There's been some great stuff in the past, but you can only re-watch old shows so many times; you want something new, you don't want to always live in the past. Suppose you like movies about people in spaceships in outer space, like Alien/Aliens, the Star Trek movies, 2001, or countless other sci-fi movies in the 70s and 80s. Well, unless you put a continuous loop of the first 10 minutes of Avatar on your TV, you're not going to see a whole lot of this kind of sci-fi made in the last 5-10 years, because there have been almost no such movies made. If someone made a new show as good as Firefly, and it didn't get canceled as soon as people started watching it, sci-fi fans would be ecstatic simply because they now have such a show to watch, when currently they don't unless they want to watch endless reruns of a 20-year-old show.

    9. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by tftp · · Score: 1

      So I found myself wondering... why do some people love it so much?

      I personally hate Firefly. I had a misfortune to see a few initial episodes, and that was that.

      I personally know people who like ST, DS9, Babylon 5, but I don't know anyone (within my circle of acquaintances) who would be ecstatic or otherwise fond of Firefly.

      I can't reliably tell today all the details that I disliked so much. But from what I recall, to be able to watch Firefly you have to like SciFi and westerns. Both. If you like only one of them then the show is not for you. I believe I even turned the T off when some kind of a folksy dance started. I have no use for SciFi with dances and dresses.

      I'm sure the few episodes that I managed to see aren't enough to fully understand the show. However it's unwatchable to me, so I guess it will remain a mystery forever.

    10. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IMO, the series got good on the second half. The first episode was extremely boring. The following few were ok.

    11. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe I even turned the T off when some kind of a folksy dance started.

      folksy dance is just a pretext for some girl to "marry" the protagonist without his (informed) consent, then planning to abduct the ship for use as scrap metal.

    12. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      I recently watched a few episodes, just to see what it was about. I love both scifi and steampunk, so I should be the target audience for a space western like that.

      But it's not Steampunk. It's pure sci-fi with some cultural western and Chinese flair on the outer-rim colony planets (not unlike star wars and star trek). Get further into the series and you'll see some core planets.

      It was... OK, I guess. The acting and writing were mediocre (A bit too many cliches, etc. but tolerable)

      That's where you part ways with a lot of us. Compare whedon's writing to Lucas or any trek, and you'll find character growth and clever interplay of personal goals.

      and the special effects were OK (when taking into account the budget constraints they probably had).

      CG will look dated because CG always looks dated. If you can ignore it while watching B5 or ST:TNG, then you can ignore it anywhere.

      The setting itself was nice, though there wasn't that much originality if you're already well familiar with the genre.

      genre? Cowboy bebop and... What else exactly?

      Really, it was on par with Farscape: I wouldn't change the channel when it's on but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it to a friend.

      Firefly keeps within its universe's setting. No aliens (all human colonies), no magic (so no episodes like Catspaw or That Old Black Magic), no sound in space, very little lasers (mass drivers still being better bang for your buck). Watch far enough, and you'll find they don't even have regular interstellar travel (it's only been done once, long ago). The only super-science they have is gravity manipulation, and it powers engines, lifts, keeps feet on the deck, and allows for insane accelerations. But very little "quasi harmonic nucleon polarity reversal" talk.

      So I found myself wondering... why do some people love it so much? Is there some specific aspect of the show that they consider well made or what?

      Did you like dr horrible's singalong blog? This show was written just as well. Humans like a little bit of cliche. Without it, there's little structure, like in an art film. But they also like surprises, and this series has a lot.

    13. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by tftp · · Score: 1

      folksy dance is just a pretext for some girl to "marry" the protagonist

      Thank you for confirming my suspicions.

    14. Re:Why do people love Firefly? by Akratau · · Score: 1

      And it has ponies...

  17. There is no good substitute by alfrin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been an avid user of Google Health for a couple years now. Since the decision to end the service was announced, I've attempted numerous times to find some sense of replacement from HealthVault. HealthVault is a great service, but its hardly equivalent. For instance, HealthVault is merely a storage system for your raw data, and to view it or continue to keep track of it, you have to utilize other services (such as through the Mayo Clinic) with which HV interfaces to manage. It has a lot of possibility, in that you can utilize many specialized services from many different places, however it fails at keeping the experience seemless. You always know that you are leaving to a new site, and often times go through redundant logins and registrations.

    Google Health however kept everything restricted to a couple pages. Your blood pressure measurements, weights and other vitals were displayed in concise graphs The greatest strength of Google Health was its stripped down visuals and your ability to create your own trackers for virtually any metric. I used it to keep track of my migraine headaches in hopes of finding a trend which would reveal possible triggers. Some of the services, such as the Mayo Clinic's personal health manager, which use HealthVault offer similar customization, but they are very stripped down, the interfaces are clunky and, once again, it takes an annoying amount of log-in's and desperate clicking to get into the service.

    I wish Google would just release the source, so that someone else could construct their own version. I for one would. I loved it.

    1. Re:There is no good substitute by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      I used it to keep track of my migraine headaches in hopes of finding a trend which would reveal possible triggers.

      Have you tried taking wheat gluten out of your diet for a month? My wife had a lot of problems with both migraines and chronic fatigue syndrome; taking gluten out of her diet pretty much fixed it. Getting rid of caffeine also helped. The only problem is that so much food has gluten in it that it's hard to get away from it, but there's more and more gluten-free stuff coming out, and many restaurants are offering gluten-free menus.

    2. Re:There is no good substitute by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Good news! You can now get gluten-free hummus! Which is the same recipe as before they put the sticker on the package, but they sure are proud...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:There is no good substitute by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Yes, there's a bunch of products where they're slapping "gluten-free" on the packaging even though the product never had gluten to begin with. They're trying to cash in on the craze with people who want gluten-free but are ignorant of what kinds of foods contain gluten (mostly anything made with wheat, barley, or rye: bread, pasta, etc.). However, it's not all bad: there's a surprising number of foods out there that you wouldn't immediately suspect to contain wheat, but if you look on the ingredients list you'll find it does, so these "gluten free!" labels are somewhat useful in quickly spotting things that are definitely safe, without having to look at the fine print on the back. Luckily, it isn't as hard as it used to be: I'm not sure if it's an FDA requirement or what, but anything with wheat now seems to have this added as an extra, bolded line below the ingredients list since wheat is an allergen for so many people.

    4. Re:There is no good substitute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Scientific evidence that wheat gluten can cause migraines and chronic fatigue syndrome is... non-existent, at best. Or uh, worst. Both?

    5. Re:There is no good substitute by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Scientific evidence that you exist is non-existent.

      I guess a neurology journal and multiple studies aren't "scientific" in your idiotic opinion.

      http://migraine.com/blog/expert-featured-article/gluten-sensitivity-and-migraines/
      http://www.celiac.com/articles/121/1/Migraine-Headaches-Gluten-Triggers-Severe-Headaches-in-Sensitive-Individuals/Page1.html

  18. Downside of not paying for something by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Paying for something is a way of voting for what one wants the provider/producer to make more of (which is why I cheerfully pay for movies and other media which I like). I guess that the downside of 'free' is losing your right to so vote.

  19. HealthAdSense by markdavis · · Score: 2

    The concept of Google having any access to health information is frightening, to say the least. They already have way too much information about way too many things for way too many of us, already.

    I have a feeling I am not alone in this feeling about the Google overlords and this might have contributed to the non-popularity of Google Health. And no, I wouldn't want to give health information to Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or Microsoft either!

    I am amazed regarding the postings here of people who have never heard of it. But for those people, Wikipedia is your friend:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_health

    1. Re:HealthAdSense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've heard of Google Health for quite some time now, but would absolutely never entrust google or anyone else with my health records. I have nothing specific to worry about today, but the day will come when your health information is used against you. You will pay higher rates and potentially not get hired for that job you want based upon your health. I envision the day when health care plan "discounts" will only be provided to those who opt in to sharing your health history. And once you share your data and some negative medial test results hit your file, you will never be able to pull that data back. I will pay more for health care simply to opt out of anyone having access... This industry is headed in a bad direction under Obama care.

    2. Re:HealthAdSense by UpnAtom · · Score: 1

      I think Gattaca should be compulsory viewing these days. It was a bit unrealistic - a government with that much power not abusing it??

      And Google themselves are turning evil for much the same reason.

      We'll soon be in the age of aborting perfectly health foetuses because they have addiction genes, or cancer genes. And people want to trust Google et al on not selling this information to potential employees or health insurers?

  20. Google being stupid, again - more to the story? by kcwhitta · · Score: 0

    Yet another stupid move by Google. At this rate, Apple is going to win hands-down with Facebook coming up behind them. Gotta wonder what's really going on.

    1. Re:Google being stupid, again - more to the story? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is an apple health and Facebook health?

  21. 2011, year of the fart app by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIVN6-yd-xU

    2012, year of the fart service.
       

    --
    Deleted
  22. doesn't say a thing about cloud services by rubycodez · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Turing0, how much were you paying for your Google Health? what service guarantee did you get for your paid contract with them? Oh, $0 and nothing. Quit your whining, so a free trial balloon was cancelled, pony up some bucks for an equivalent service with a vendor and then you'll have a right to complain about service or lack thereof.

    1. Re:doesn't say a thing about cloud services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      There's a difference between "whining" and "publicizing". If a company like Google starts pulling the plug on service after service, even if I didn't use those services, it's important to me to know, so I can decide how dependable the services I DO use, are. Every time Google turns the lights out on another service.. Wave, Knol, Health, etc, I start to have second thoughts about Gmail, Picasa, Reader, etc. And it's also a big reason why I'm not buying in to Google+.

    2. Re:doesn't say a thing about cloud services by rubycodez · · Score: 0

      you'd better be expecting exactly nothing from google's free services. that way, you won't be disappointed when you get it. google owes you nothing.

    3. Re:doesn't say a thing about cloud services by syousef · · Score: 1

      Turing0, how much were you paying for your Google Health? what service guarantee did you get for your paid contract with them? Oh, $0 and nothing. Quit your whining, so a free trial balloon was cancelled, pony up some bucks for an equivalent service with a vendor and then you'll have a right to complain about service or lack thereof.

      If free is justification for ****ing over your customer, that is a good reason to never use or trust a free service, or free software etc. let alone allow yourself to become reliant on it. Also most companies who offer products and services for free wish them to become popular so that they can be profitable in other ways. Turing0 has already paid for his use by providing his information to be onsold to advertisers and by consuming ads. Further even if Turing0 had paid, exactly how much is enough in order for you to allow him to "whine"? Surely to make any sense he must not just be sole customer paying 10s or 100s of dollars - rather he must fund the service in large part in order to "count". Well what you're describing is a twisted situation where customers fail to hold service providers accountable therefore service providers have no incentive to provide reliable service. Pretty soon all service is horrible.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    4. Re:doesn't say a thing about cloud services by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      You have a silly misconception, he was not a customer. he was a "user". the "customers" pay google millions of dollars for analytics and marketing. Free is always justification for terminating a service. there is nothing wrong with it. Turing0 could have paid any amount at all, then we would have customer and the matter would be greatly different (even under law), and he could indeed have basis for complaining.

      there is old story of rich man who went to a man's house and gave him $1,000 every week. but one day, months later, the rich man went to another house in the neighborhood to give $1,000, and the first guy was angry and yelled "where is my $1,000! you are a thief, give me my money!"

      It is the same thing. the answer to be given in either case is the same, 'shut the fuck up, you whining ingrate."

  23. Not just the cloud by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 1

    This isn't specific to the cloud. This is one of the risks when you put anything crucial to the existence of your business completely in the hands of a single other entity. It could be as basic as having a sole source for a part that you have to have available to manufacture your product. If that supplier goes out of business or discontinues that part, you're SOL. And since you don't have any control over them, you can't do anything about the situation. Your only recourse is what every businessman has known for centuries: make sure you always have more than one source for any critical supplies and items. That's also why businesses had warehouses, so if there was any interruption in their supply stream it wouldn't shut them down while they sorted out how to get their supplies and raw materials delivered. The cloud's just another case of this. If you base your entire business on a service provided by a single company, you're at the mercy of their business plan (or lack thereof). A smart businessman would insure he could get the same service from at least 2 sources, so if one of them shut down he'd still be in business and have time to figure out what to do next.

  24. Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously. I never recommend to my customers that they rely on "cloud services". In the last year or so, even Amazon and other services have gone down, taking innumerable websites offline for unpredictable amounts of time.

    Just recently, an Amazon server went down, and a customer was notified that their site was down and that they had 48 hours to save the site or it would be gone... and they received the notice about 24 hours after that 48 hours had already expired.

    Other people I know have had other, similar experiences.

    My advice to customers is: DO NOT make your business dependent on the performance of "services" over which your have no control. You are putting all your eggs in someone else's basket, and that's just plain a Bad Idea. And that includes everything from depending on Google Apps to sites on EC2.

    I'll pass, thanks very much.

    1. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by arse+maker · · Score: 0

      Because if you own the server it can never go down?

    2. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by fnj · · Score: 1

      Not capriciously on purpose, genius. Not unless the USER WANTS to take it down or it fails.

    3. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

      No. Don't be ridiculous. That's not what I stated at all.

      Because it's not your server, and you are completely at the mercy of some other company.

      If your server goes down, you can do something about it. You can decide what your priorities are, and act accordingly. If somebody else's server goes down, they decide what their priorities are, and you may not be among them.

      For example: I know of a site that is served from the Amazon "cloud", requires a Yahoo login, and its email, which is essential to the site's operation, goes through gmail. In addition, it uses several javascript files, also essential to its operation, which are loaded from remote servers.

      If any ONE of those services go down, so does the site. Or at least a major part of it.

      It's a dumb way to build an application.

    4. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by froggymana · · Score: 1

      Because if you own the server it can never go down?

      At least you can control it and have it fixed/replaced. Good luck getting cloud services provided by Google or Amazon back up once they have determined not to support them anymore and to take them off of the "cloud".

      --
      "To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
    5. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by codepunk · · Score: 1

      It is called disaster recovery and just because you are running on a cloud providers infrastructure does not eliminate the requirement.

      My advice to customers is to plan for failure recovery just as you would if running in house.

      --


      Got Code?
    6. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the last year or so, even Amazon and other services have gone down, taking innumerable websites offline for unpredictable amounts of time.

      So, what do you recommend?

      Show me a datacenter with 100% uptime. Even five nines is mythical legend only.

    7. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Seriously. I never recommend to my customers that they rely on "cloud services". In the last year or so, even Amazon and other services have gone down, taking innumerable websites offline for unpredictable amounts of time.

      Indeed. It's far better to rely on your own servers - after all, they never go down.

    8. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      That has almost nothing at all to do with it.

      There are two issues here: first, many sites are dependent on more than one external service to work. Maybe they're hosted on EC2 and load all their javascript from google.com or jquery.org.

      All they are doing is multiplying their possible points of failure.

      Second, if your own server goes down, YOU can decide what to do about it. You don't have to sit around in the dark waiting for somebody else to get around to it... if they ever do. (Like the Amazon incident I mentioned: the customer did not have a service contract. So Amazon said: "Yes, it was our hardware that failed. Yes, it's our fault. No, we won't lift a finger to help you fix it unless you buy at least a $400 service contract."

    9. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by HockeyPuck · · Score: 1

      You do realize that there are "services" that 99.9999% of the population must rely on. Like WAN/Network Services. I believe people were using the term "WAN Cloud" well before the term was applied to server/application clouds.

      Dunno about you but the company that I work for (very large IT company), doesn't own all the dark fibre in between it's world wide sites and leases quite a few WAN circuits from various telco providers.

    10. Re:Why Cloud Services are Not Recommended by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      That is a completely different category from "cloud services" though.

  25. Re:Always leave them wanting more. by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 1

    I found the writing quite amusing at times, and the rest of it was good enough that I am willing to sit through it to get to the good bits.

    More on topic, when a series (or product or service) is removed people will generally feel a sense of loss. If there is no similar replacement, people will tend to remember the good parts, forget the bad parts, and want to relive those halcyon days when it existed.

    When something outlives its shelf life, people get used to it not being so good, and its loss isn't as much of an impact. "They should have killed it earlier" is something I read a lot.

    A highly rated restaurant will often give you enough food to be sated, but no so much that you are stuffed, so that you want to come back. The widely bashed "gourmet" portion sizes, where you appear to pay a lot for relatively little, is intended to whet your appetite for future visits in the same way a cancelled series makes people look forward to a "next installment" which never arrives.

    It's quite simply the negative side of "Always leave them wanting more."

  26. Personal Health Records by kuhneng · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault's personal health records (PHRs) are well known in health IT circles, but even among the health IT and healthcare informatics professionals I work with, uptake has been very shallow. There have been connected PHR-enabled sensors available for weight, blood pressure, blood glucose, and many other biometrics for some time, but again, very little interest in flowing this data into stand alone PHRs.

    Stand alone PHRs aren't the only way to facilitate doctor-patient interaction. Many leading electronic medical records systems (EMRs) offer integrated personal health records - the disadvantage being that these records only show the data from one provider or health care system. Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are rapidly springing up across the country to facilitate provider to provider data integration and provide a compelling model for direct patient participation in their care.

    Personally, I've tracked these services for years but I've never bothered to create an account. Entering my information manually is tedious, and the standards and integration between EMRs and stand-along PHRs is emerging at best. If I had a fully populated PHR, it's not clear what value I'd really get out of it. My main provider already has most of my information and can source information directly from other practices when needed. Doctors are culturally suspicious of patient submitted data, as they have concerns about amateur self-diagnosis and drug-seeking patients.

    The way Google is winding this down increases my trust in their other services. Google announced their plan to shutter Google Health a year and a half before the final shutdown date. They're offering multiple data export and migration options, including instructions and support to migrate to their largest competitor, HealthVault. I've had significantly worse experiences with migration / upgrade of many paid services / software - I'm looking at you Intuit.

    1. Re:Personal Health Records by Treffster · · Score: 3, Informative

      I am a full-time software engineer working in Health IT, specialising in in-hospital cross-system integration. Our business is accepting the data feeds from lab systems, radiology systems, ED information systems, and patient administration systems, and then present the results as a cohesive single health record.

      Well, you'd think standards and compliance would make it easy, but that assumes when people say they meet the standard... they ACTUALLY meet the standard. Format is one thing, but ensuring correct sequence and field validation is something else entirely. Unlike HTTP and the internet, in health there are no business drivers for integration compliance.

      On the contrary - large companies (like Cerner) who can offer an "all-in-one-integrated-solution" benefit from the lack of conformance. The real obstacle is not setting up trusted health vaults, that's the easy part. The difficulty is populating it with live information, from live systems, with full trust.

      Of course, that's before you mention terminology. Does a haemoglobin result mean the same thing from two different lab systems? How about normal ranges? Blood glucose or urine glucose? Presenting complaint vs discharge diagnosis? I'm not trying to be overly pessimistic, but this is a much more difficult problem than simply sticking up a database somewhere.

  27. When it is free... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, when you are not paying for a service, you are no longer a customer - but the product. When you are no longer a profitable product, the service will end.

  28. Google Health by krsmav · · Score: 1

    Alas, 99.9999999999999999999999999% of health advice on the internet is quackery. I quickly learned to skip the rest and go to the Mayo Clinic for real rather than imaginary information. Not to mention that it's free.

    1. Re:Google Health by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, a lot of the healthcare profession is quackery. Just look at chiropractic. There might be something to it with musculoskeletal problems, but most of them claim to be able to cure all kinds of other ailments with their "adjustments". And a lot of them practice other strange offshoots like kinesiology (basically where you hold a bottle with a supplement near the patient, have him extend his arm, and push down on it and see how hard it is to push down on his outstretched arm; if they're weaker, then they supposedly need this supplement).

  29. A Mattter of Trust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought about joining when it first came out.
    Then I thought about what might happen if the information got loose and decided against participating.

  30. All these projects were nice by google. by Celexi · · Score: 1

    However, they really need to focus on their core products and bring them up to par to their competitors, if they did that. They would be leading in thos specific things instead of launching these stupid things every other month or 2 months, like google Talk PC client, has not been updated since 2006 or 2007. And doesn't have the same voice codecs of any of the web versions or video. Not to mention their mess up on google talk and Messenger on google plus. But that is just one of them, i will support google for some more to come. But there is only so much we can have faith on.

  31. They could have better integrated it into Google+ by aix+tom · · Score: 1

    Some sort of "Social" follow-my-bowel-movement thing or some such.

  32. No More Innovation at Google ! by eulernet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm surprised that nobody noticed it: Google is stopping all its future innovations, and concentrate on short-term revenues, which is a decision from their CEO, not by the cost of maintaining the current tools (it's a very small cost).

    Something similar happened in 2000 with the 3M company, when James McNerney from GE became the new CEO.
    http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_24/b4038406.htm
    In 5 years, 3M, which was ranked as the most innovative company in the world, fell at the 7th place.
    This year, 3M disappeared from the 50 most innovative companies, check here:
    http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html

    McNerney focused on using Six Sigma, and improving productivity.
    3M, based on a culture of innovation since 100 years, had its internal culture almost destroyed in only 5 years.

    The inventor of post-it said that it would have been impossible that the "post-it" concept would have been successful using the new method.

    In my opinion, it's a very short-sighted decision, as you can see with Microsoft and IBM, which invest a lot of money in innovation.
    It's impossible to predict what will work in a few years, and I doubt that the current monopoly of Google on Internet ads will long very last.

    Now, let me give a prediction:
    currently, Apple and Google are ranked 1st and 2nd as the most innovative companies.
    I bet that in 2 years, they won't be in the top 10 anymore.

    1. Re:No More Innovation at Google ! by fnj · · Score: 2

      This has happened in many American and western companies, at a grossly accelerating pace in recent years. Useless fucking business management droids don't have a clue what makes a society flourish, and they can do a lot to destroy it.

      Capitalism at work, guys.

    2. Re:No More Innovation at Google ! by eulernet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, it's not because of capitalism, since IBM and Microsoft are probably even more capitalist than Google or Apple.
      It's a human decision.
      Do you focus on your next quarter, or do you see farther ?

      Google encouraged its employees to work 20% of their time on innovation. Now, I'm sure that this is no more the case.

      Google is taking the easiest route, and when you stop taking risks, you don't create anymore.
      The option "let's cut all useless expenses" is necessary only when you are in big financial trouble, otherwise, it's just plainly stupid.

      Let's see how the stock market will respond now.

    3. Re:No More Innovation at Google ! by TubeSteak · · Score: 1

      Do you focus on your next quarter, or do you see farther ?

      Google has a dual class stock structure.
      Sergey Brin & Larry Page control 48% of the voting shares and they're rich enough that they don't have to care about the next quarter.
      If Google is shutting down projects, it's because that's what the two top dogs want. No one has the votes to tell them how to run the company.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    4. Re:No More Innovation at Google ! by Treffster · · Score: 1

      You are incorrect.

      Google is not "halting innovation", it is following the advice of Steve Jobs (remember him?) and learning focus.

      Google has not pulled money from its autonomous vehicle development.

      It has not reduced the spend it has allocated to significant long term investments such as Google+ (there is nothing short-term about investing in a social network, it has taken Facebook 5 years to reach its current valuation)

      In fact, Google has assigned one of its two company founders specifically to fostering new innovation.

      Focus means that you don't throw a pile of muck at the wall and see what sticks. That leaves customers and users with a bad taste in their mouth: e.g. Google Buzz.

      Focus means you put the entire weight of your brand and pocket book behind a single idea, and you make it stick: e.g. iPod.

      Focus means having real innovation, and ensuring the market is ready to follow, like Xbox, Android, and iPhone. It takes a lot of innovation and focus to ensure you end up with iOS, not WebOS. With Facebook, not mySpace. You can't do that when you are spreading yourself too thin, and your brand name takes a beating as a result.

      Google's reputation and brand has not gained a single benefit from their investment in health. Why would they continue to do so?

    5. Re:No More Innovation at Google ! by eulernet · · Score: 2

      Sorry, but you are wrong.

      Innovation is not about taking a single idea and pushing it until it works.
      Innovation is about taking a lot of ideas, and see what is viable.
      I see that you don't know the story behind post-it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postit
      Fry explained that you have one very successful idea out of 5000 concepts.

      Google's goal is to aggregate all the knowledge in the world, so why do they close useful search services, like codesearch ?
      http://google.com/codesearch
      If a project needs a large team to maintain it, like Wave or Buzz, I agree that Google needs to stop putting money into these projects, but when the project requires only a few people, why stop it completely ?
      Also, I think it's a very bad idea to stop these projects (Wave, Buzz) entirely:
      1) they should reduce the teams to only a few guys, in order to keep the services. Maybe it will become successful one day.
      2) killing projects like this shows to the whole Google employees that it's useless to suggest new ideas, because Google will never take the risk to start them. The message is: "Google is only interested into successful projects, and will not take any risk". If I was a Google employee, I would start my own company, instead of giving my own idea to them.

      Even Google Health might become important in a near future, I'm not sure, I cannot test it, being outside of US.

      And I'd like to see what Google will do with their automated cars.
      It's a technological showcase, but the risk is too high to have an automated car: if you have an accident, who is responsible ?

      Focus has nothing to do with success. MySpace was focused, and it fails. Facebook is focused, and it succeeds.

      Apple is not focusing on technology, since it's trying to be a software AND an hardware company (iMac, iPod, iPad).
      A lot of companies tried to sell tablets, and only Apple succeeded in branding it.
      And don't talk to me about iOS or anything, nobody cares about that.

      Apple's success is only because they are focusing on the users, and Google doesn't care at all about them, it cares only about its clients (advertisers), or in other words money.

      Let's see if Apple without Jobs will continue its focus on users.
      Let's see how long Google will continue to dominate the search market, once people realize that Google doesn't care about them.

    6. Re:No More Innovation at Google ! by cbope · · Score: 1

      I can agree 100% with this, and as someone who survived a GE acquisition, I feel the pain. Luckily, GE bought us to acquire some of our other technology units and we were sold off after a couple years. But, during the years we were under GE, innovation stagnated. We learned that GE really stands for "good enough". Our GE tenure put us 3-4 years behind the competition, taking into account the catch-up scenario we were left with after separation from GE.

  33. Elaborate hack-upon-hack syndrome... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of the reasons the apps between the database and user are so obtuse in healthcare is that they are trying to satisfy a baroque set of regulations and best practices about what information to present at what time. Much like the tax code, the medical environment is saddled by a management process that just keeps adding special cases and exceptions rather than formulating a clear, concise rule set.

    Actually, a lot of this problem is larger than just the database systems... The entire healthcare space is driven by a cover-your-ass mentality that accumulates layer upon layer of best practices which are as much about shielding liability as they are about being effective. Or, rather, shielding of liability seems to be an awfully large component of what defines effectiveness in our litigious era.

    1. Re:Elaborate hack-upon-hack syndrome... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, a lot of this problem is larger than just the database systems... The entire healthcare space is driven by a cover-your-ass mentality that accumulates layer upon layer of best practices which are as much about shielding liability as they are about being effective. Or, rather, shielding of liability seems to be an awfully large component of what defines effectiveness in our litigious era.

      Healthcare ? Try being a consultant. This problem is not limited, at all, to the healthcare industry. It covers the banking, insurance, healthcare, car manufacturing (in the states), regulated exchanges and most government instances and companies that do a large percentage of business with the government (which sadly includes quite a few consultancy companies). Well with the exception of very young companies and even excepting very young government agencies.

      Imho this is what doing business with an entity that is not bound by it's word (the government, unilaterally rewriting laws as it sees fit) gets you. Also even though the separation between the judiciary and the executive certainly exists and they prevent the worst excesses, it doesn't go nearly far enough. Sadly, the judiciary isn't courageous enough to tell the mob of public opinion that they signed a contract and are now bound by it.

      In fact it's what makes me doubt democracy : time and time again the government regulates end results, while sabotaging the means to get there. This is not really different in healthcare or banking. And I don't just mean unions (although they're a small, but incredibly persistent part of this). I mean stuff like regulating the cleaning of operating theatres, then regulate that everybody needs to get treated, then refusing to look at the first regulation when new technology comes around because the union fears a cleaner might lose her job (actually I think the issue was more that the union representative would lose his assistant, but that's not how it was presented of course).

      This wouldn't be nearly so bad if public opinions wasn't so incredibly fickle. Israel or anti-Israel ? (often a factor in healthcare acquisitions) Pro- or contra nuclear reactors (nuclear reactors are a necessity for a whole range of treatments and diagnosis equipment) ? Pro- or contra neutron reactors ? (the only alternative to one of the things that require nuclear reactors). Pro or contra animal experiments ? Genetic manipulation ? (e.g. there used to be a big stink about growing insulin in genetically modified cows, but in general animal experiments are required for some diagnosis tools and certain treatment substances are often only available grown in GM'ed animals present in the hospital)

      You'd think that "it saves lives" would end the argument in every case except perhaps the nuclear discussion, although even there, even if you believe the hiroshima death toll and the worst figures of all nuclear disasters, nuclear reactors still have saved far more lives than they ever endangered (>90% of all cured cancer patients). But regardless, it is not. It is curious to see politicians discuss with docters that have been practicing for 40 years and declaring that those docters are wrong, that (just taking something) GM costs lives.

      With Obamacare, the discussion every docter feared has finally arrived. Which one you ask ? "How much $ is a human life worth ? At which point do we stop treatment ?". That used to be a discussion with "does X cover Y ? What is max/year ?", and done. Which basically means cancer patients had $100k/year, without all that many other conditions. Whatever Obama says publicly, his answer seems to be around the range of $2000 per year of life, with a few obviously politically motivated exceptions (like abortion : cost is no object, hiv : same, births have to cost less than half that (wtf ? we will spend >10000$ on keeping a woman who's had a bleed after an abortion alive but have to spend less than 1500 to keep a newborn breathing ? WTF ?), and for the love of god don't develop c

  34. Re:Apple Troll With Multiple Accounts by fnj · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Damn right he is.

  35. Re:Apple Troll With Multiple Accounts by fnj · · Score: 1

    Go to Hell, Google lackey. He has made a valid point (unlike you).

  36. Alternatives? by jk80D8 · · Score: 1

    The same basic functions of Google Health can be achieved with a spreadsheet and some organization (except the perhaps convenient share feature). There's nothing groundbreaking here it seems. If you're really hurting for the same interface, I can't imagine it would take very long to write one. And Google provides a raw data file for download, so no need to start over with your records. Software like GNUmed will be major overkill compared to GH, but there might be other simpler alternatives that exist for maintaining a personal health record.

    The point about dependence on the cloud is a valid and obvious one. Whether or not a service is free will determine your right to lament its passing on /. apparently (I don't think there is any "whining" here), but the service can be discontinued just the same. If you had been paying for it, you'd receive a refund and an apology, but you'd still lose a service which could have otherwise been sustained with local software.

    GH is likely the veritable drop in a big financial bucket, but there's probably more to it than cost. Maintaining secure health records and complying with stuff like HIPAA rules can be treacherous, and I suspect that liability played some role in the decision. Maybe not...

    1. Re:Alternatives? by kikito · · Score: 1

      "The same basic functions of Google Health can be achieved with a spreadsheet and some organization (except the perhaps convenient share feature)"

      Google Docs spreadsheets. They can be shared.

  37. hoarded by r00t · · Score: 4, Interesting

    records are hoarded by doctors, pharmacies, hospitals

    It's offensive how this works. Take my X-rays for example. My surgeon sent me some place to get them done. He's the one with a clue; they just take pictures. Despite this, they insist on having me wait for some on-staff radiologist to "interpret" the X-rays. They claim state law requires this. (if so, surely because they lobbied for it) Then I'm not allowed to truly own the images, physically or by copyright, and neither is my surgeon. (again by state law, which they surely lobbied for) I'm allowed to borrow the X-rays, taking them to my surgeon so he can see them. I'm sternly warned that I'm violating some law if I don't bring them back. WTF, is somebody covering the storage costs? Fortunately I didn't see a due date, so I'm still "borrowing" my own damn X-rays a decade later and I don't remember who the "owner" is. If I had foolishly been a good boy and returned them, I'd currently have no possible way to access them. The X-rays would be gone, preventing future surgeons from being able to compare them with newer X-rays or being able to make an initial guess before ordering new X-rays.

    The same goes for the dentist. IMHO, it's a racket to encourage repeat business. Come back to us, or you suffer extra X-ray exposure and it won't even be covered by your insurance.

    1. Re:hoarded by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's weird. I live in AZ, and I recently had a CT scan done. They gave me a CD-R of all the images before I walked out the door, and I loaned that to my surgeon to take a look at (along with the radiologist report). I still have the disc, so I'm the "owner" of the images.

      As for my dentist, we'll see when I move out of state if my dentist will transfer my records to my new dentist. He's a pretty nice guy and I suspect he will, but I don't know for sure yet.

      It does help, however, to check out your doctors before doing any business with them. Look them up on Google Maps and see if there's any reviews written about them. Shy away from anyone with negative reviews. Before seeing my current surgeon, I had a visit with a competing one, and what a jerk he was, and his office staff was utterly incompetent, mixing up my records with some other patients' (one bimbo said this was a recurring problem for them). I canceled all future visits and found my present surgeon who's great, but I looked up the first one and found a bunch of bad reviews complaining about the office staff etc. I added my own too.

    2. Re:hoarded by LostCluster · · Score: 1

      This is the problem with Electronic Health Records (EHR). Everybody has their own system for keeping records, and Google Health was just an extra patient-controlled database that needed custom bridging just like everything else. HL7 (Health Layer 7) is supposed to be the solution, but with it's constantly changing spec (2.x was pipe-delimited, 3.x will be XML if they ever finish it...) nobody likes to use it.

    3. Re:hoarded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The law is very clear on this; YOU own your medical records. All of them. They are required BY LAW to turn them over to you upon request.

    4. Re:hoarded by GNious · · Score: 3, Interesting

      records are hoarded by doctors, pharmacies, hospitals

      It's offensive how this works. Take my X-rays for example. My surgeon sent me some place to get them done. He's the one with a clue; they just take pictures. Despite this, they insist on having me wait for some on-staff radiologist to "interpret" the X-rays. They claim state law requires this.

      I had xrays done, and the on-site radiologist discovered the cracked vertebrae immediately and got me rushed to get an MRI which showed the problem in more detail. If they've simply punted it to the doctor, it would have been hours (and likely end-of-business-come-again-tomorrow) before the doctor would have seen them.

      Since then, I had my hand xray'd following a fracture - there the radiologist wasn't so much checking for the fracture (I told them up front about that one), but to verify the quality of the pictures before they are given to the doctor.

    5. Re:hoarded by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Ok! You used a words with a negative connotations to prove your point. Try with logic except for emotional rambling.

      1. A Surgeon isn't a Radiologist. Surgeons are trained to work inside the body. a Radiologist are trained to analyze imaging. If the Surgeon goes a head and makes an Analysis off of say an X-Ray image and makes a mistake. He will get sued for malpractice, and he should, he doesn't have the training to understand the information. Surgeons know the body in a 3d view, Radiologists know it in a 2d view, so with an X-ray a radiologists can make a better statement without jumping to the wrong conclusion.

      2. HIPAA guidelines which are meant to preserve patient privacy (Also has began to get some teeth against violators) And I doubt doctors are going to lobby for more regulations to get placed on them that could put them out of business (Or in Jail) due to a small mistake.

      3. The health care provider needs those X-Rays on their records because if there is a legal issue that goes on they need evidence. If they get audited by the insurance company where they charged you for an X-Ray then they cannot produce the X-Ray then they could face fine or jail.

      I work in health care and I work with doctors a lot of them are Arrogant, Pig Headed, Greedy, and many other nasty words. However these rules and regulations makes sure they keep in mind patient safety and accountability.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  38. I'd go public if everybody else did too by r00t · · Score: 1

    Let's put all medical info on the internet, publicly accessible. Let's include DNA sequences and video of all medical procedures. This would be wonderful for accountability (billing fraud, malpractice, etc.) and research. It would increase continuity of care, particularly when you show up unconscious far away from your normal care provider. It would cut down on the spread of disease, especially if we added mandatory testing for disease: you can look on the internet to see if your date has an STD. It would cut down on crazy people and drug addicts going from doctor to doctor in search of one (or a hundred) who will cave in to some demand. In short, the benefits would be astronomical.

    1. Re:I'd go public if everybody else did too by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"In short, the benefits would be astronomical."

      Yeah, I guess the concept of privacy just has no meaning to modern society. One could/would never be prejudged by those with access to such information, or be a victim of unfair discrimination. There could never be misleading or incorrect information about someone in such a system.

    2. Re:I'd go public if everybody else did too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clark is the book you're looking for...

    3. Re:I'd go public if everybody else did too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And no information could be maliciously added, removed or altered. For example, flipping a couple of flags related to sensitivity to treatments or perhaps some genetic issues.

    4. Re:I'd go public if everybody else did too by FreakyGreenLeaky · · Score: 1

      just wow.

      Can you imagine that kind of information being accessible by dictators, religious groups, Dick Cheney, corporations, governments, fraudsters, criminals, someone with an axe to grind, the Taliban, your asshole neighbour, etc.

      Considering the profoundly damaging issues of erosion/invasion of privacy and identity theft occurring ever more frequently, the post above is, well, surprising.

    5. Re:I'd go public if everybody else did too by r00t · · Score: 1

      Of course there are downsides, but the benefits would be astronomical.

      You need to remember that the information is already somewhat available to wealthy assholes. If somebody with money and determination wants your DNA, they will get it from your doorknob. (hands will do; no need for genital contact with your doorknob)

    6. Re:I'd go public if everybody else did too by xmundt · · Score: 1

      Greetings and Salutations.
                I suspect that almost all the people who call for such an open book are quite young and likely far too innocent. Already though, there are tales floating around the net about how facebook postings, and, other social site postings that have come back to bite the poster on the ass, causing them to not get jobs, or lose jobs, or screw up relationships. Beyond that how can anyone feel comfortable with someone staring over their shoulder all the time. Up to recently, the only people that had that lack of privacy were high-security prisoners...
                Pleasant dreams
                xmundt
       

      --
      YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
  39. Wow no one heard about it... by Apothem · · Score: 1

    Maybe the reason why no one ever heard of it is because Google is a Tech company. They didn't get the attention they wanted because they dont spend the time to market their products. How many times did you even hear an announcement about any of the new services google started offering? Maybe one at the launch but that's probably it. Honestly it just seems like it's more of a failure to inform the public on what they're doing more so than that they aren't making a quality product, or need to focus on one thing more than the other.

    1. Re:Wow no one heard about it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, I heard about it. I worked at Cedars-Sinai and one of the integration fellows worked with it. It was a hodge-podge of mismatched API's all over the place, the code that was required was a royal pain in the ass, useless documentation, and we were fighting a a director who was a micro-managing bitch of the nth degree to even share anything.

      It was killed by Google because Google itself wrote a shitty interface for people that write shitty code and hospitals that cave in to shitty politics.

  40. Civilization is the progress toward privacy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
    Ayn Rand

    1. Re:Civilization is the progress toward privacy... by xmundt · · Score: 1

      I am impressed...something from Ayn Rand that I can actually agree with. i suppose that this is an example of how a lotus blossom can grow from a river of feces.
      Not that I am unimpressed by her writings...or ANY THING like that
      pleasant dreams
      xvart

      --
      YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
  41. Non-Cloud program for doing this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Free/Open source? I, like a lot of people commenting haven't heard of this before today. I took a look at it, and it seems like a pretty good idea, any replacement non-cloud service for this?

  42. Google have handled this responsibly. by Quick+Reply · · Score: 1

    Hang on a tic. Google have been sending emails for months to advise users that it will be shutting down and are allowing users to export their data until 2013. I don't see the problem here. They didn't just pull the plug without notice.

  43. Lying through their teeth by reiisi · · Score: 1

    I asked for my sister's records once and got physical film. Three months later they gave me a CD. When I said thanks, they said it was just what they were legally required to do.

    Storing the film was a pain and reading the CD was a pain, but passing them to the next doc and getting them back was a lot quicker than having one hospital send them to the other.

    --
    Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
    1. Re:Lying through their teeth by r00t · · Score: 1

      Sure that film was the original? I wouldn't want some degraded 2nd-generation copy.

      Fortunately this issue is going away with perfect digital copies.

  44. microsoft did/doesn't abuse customers? by reiisi · · Score: 1

    Funny. I would have sworn I felt abused by all the advertised features in VC/VS that didn't work in my case.

    I hear that there's this syndrome where the abusee ends up always trying to defend the abuser.

    --
    Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
  45. Actual useage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is my first time hearing about Google Health also. How did you use Google Health?
    I guess if you have a medical condition that is quite rare, you'd better off using PatientsLikeMe.com to share experiences about your condition and to stay up to date on current development of treatment methods.

    If you're using it for tracking personal stats like weight, strength etc, then most people who knows about Google Health might just want to make their own database/spreadsheet solution.

    Would anyone NOT worried about their health actually use this service? If you feel happy and have some basic understanding of eating varied and modestly, would you need a service like this? Or is this service just some physical representation of the fear and worry embedded in American-British culture? Maybe it's going out of fashion. Maybe the user base says "Fuck off. We don't need you. Your money-making machine will not convince me to worry any more. Worry takes humanity nowhere and I want to go anywhere."

  46. Good thing by FreakyGreenLeaky · · Score: 1

    Google as a corporation is considered a trustworthy intermediary by most users and health care professionals

    lol, you poor naive little baby, you.

  47. Characters by witherstaff · · Score: 1

    Whedon does a great job of character interaction. Buffy interplay with a large cast by the end was amusing, Angel was a darker mood but enjoyable, and Firefly strikes me as the best example of his style. The characters had backgrounds that mattered and stories that didn't have the characters change their behavior to fit the storyline. (For example, the last few episodes of Sanctuary just was too forced with Will all of a sudden anti-Magnus, was way out of line with his character) If you've only seen a few episodes of FireFly watch the rest, in order. The tone was also different, ST had a consistent clean glossy future. BSG was nitty gritty drama. Stargates all had the clean future also (Let's ignore SG:U, that didn't figure out what it was). Firefly had just the right mix of a lived in universe, the western motif and had a good mix of drama and comedy. Besides, the companions were hot. I'll be in my bunk.

  48. Access, at a moments notice by witherstaff · · Score: 1

    I agree that Google should have made a long term commitment. Wasn't this one of the founder's wives' pet projects? That alone should be enough reason to focus and do it right. With one of the Google founders worried about their personal genetics and wanting to program their own genes healthcare should be getting a huge IT bonus instead it looks like they're dropping the ball. I wouldn't be surprised about political pressure. The latest health care law limits hospital competition so the per-hospital electronic records have no need to be competitive. I've seen what top hospitals like cleveland clinic offer for electronic records. That sort of record keeping should be standard.

  49. online statements? by NuShrike · · Score: 1

    And do you guys trust online bill statements? Same problem.

    I'd rather they PGP email, or mail-drop an encrypted statement every month than park it on their site (and wait for me to remember to download it) for the amount of money they're making off me every month.

  50. Cloud Shmoud. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People refer to the cloud as a place to store their precious data. I consider that as stupid as trying to stand on a cloud. Literally. They're wispy and insubstantial and you'd fall right through. I'd rather keep my data the way I've kept it since I was a boy... on punched cards! :) Hey, at least I don't have to worry about magnetic storms, or some "service provider" deciding one day that they don't want to provide that so-called "service" anymore...

  51. google health, good for google, but not me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I could do without Google anything.. .

  52. Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm amazed at the tone of the posts in this thread. All these people bemoaning the "loss" of Google Health.

    All you people really wanted to give Google this information? Seriously?

    I say; good riddance.

  53. Google Desktop Search by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The biggest boner was retiring Google Desktop Search.

  54. WRONG by syousef · · Score: 2

    It's free, therefore they cancel it is a fallacy. Paid services also get cancelled.

    It's free, so they get to encourage you to rely on it then pull the rug from under you and you have to say "thank you" is also a fallacy. My lack of payment does not mean that the provider can't do me harm.

    The message is clear. Cloud services are for suckers. If you can't independently access your data and run your code, it's integrity, security and accessibility are at the whim of the hosting company.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  55. Longevity? by Ramin_HAL9001 · · Score: 1

    In a sense, longevity is an issue for any non-free software. With open source software, as long as someone is interested in using it, that software will be useful. With non-free software, once it is past its end-of-life date, it is only as good as long as it can run on your operating system. Web applications are only a more extreme form of non-free software, because they don't run on your computer, they run on the operator's computer.

  56. Myopic by Myopic · · Score: 1

    Who else around here is claiming to make Myopic decisions?

  57. nope, I'm almost 40 by r00t · · Score: 1

    I suppose I might even qualify as "middle-age". (ouch)

    My life tends to be better when crummy people get what they deserve. If you lose your job because your employer finds out about you, then maybe I can take that job. Maybe my son will take your job. Alternately, maybe you would rather shape up to avoid losing your job. I like it if you shape up; it's not cool if you run around spreading diseases or driving drunk.

    And yes, I really do want you to lose a relationship with my kid if you have some disease or drug issue.

    So no, I don't mind this issue at all. I love the idea even more because of it. Fix your life, and you will have nothing to be embarrassed about.