Google To Store Patient Medical Records
- From: rpautrey2 <rpautrey2@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:22:14 -0800 (PST)
Google To Store Patient Medical Records
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 21, 2008
(AP) Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few
thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's
likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive
information entrusted to the Internet search leader.
The pilot project to be announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to
10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an
electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be
retrieved through Google's new service, which won't be open to the
general public.
Each health profile, including information about prescriptions,
allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password
that's also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and
personalized search tools.
Google views its expansion into health records management as a logical
extension because its search engine already processes millions of
requests from people trying to find about more information about an
injury, illness or recommended treatment.
But the health venture also will provide more fodder for privacy
watchdogs who believe Google already knows too much about the
interests and habits of its users as its computers log their search
requests and store their e-mail discussions.
Prodded by the criticism, Google last year introduced a new system
that purges people's search records after 18 months. In a show of its
privacy commitment, Google also successfully rebuffed the U.S. Justice
Department's demand to examine millions of its users' search requests
in a court battle two years ago.
The Mountain View-based company hasn't specified a timetable for
unveiling the health service, which has been the source of much
speculation for the past two years. Marissa Mayer, the Google
executive overseeing the health project, has previously said the
service would debut in 2008.
Contacted Wednesday, a Google spokesman declined to elaborate on its
plans. The Associated Press learned about the pilot project from the
Cleveland Clinic, a not-for-profit medical center founded 87 years
ago.
The clinic already keeps the personal health records of more than
120,000 patients on its own online service called MyChart. Patients
who transfer the information to Google would still be able to get the
data quickly even if they were no longer being treated by the
Cleveland Clinic.
"We believe patients should be able to easily access and manage their
own health information," Mayer said in a statement supplied by the
Cleveland Clinic.
The Cleveland Clinic decided to work with Google "to create a more
efficient and effective national health care system," said C. Martin
Harris, the medical center's chief information officer.
Google isn't the first high-tech heavyweight to set up an online
filing cabinet in an effort make it easier for people to get their
medical records after they change doctors or health insurance plans.
Rival Microsoft Corp. last year introduced a similar service called
HealthVault, and AOL co-founder Steve Case is backing Revolution
Health, which also offers online tools for managing personal health
histories.
The third-party services are troublesome because they aren't covered
by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA,
said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, which
just issued a cautionary report on the topic.
Passed in 1996, HIPPA established strict standards that classify
medical information as a privileged communication between a doctor and
patient. Among other things, the law requires a doctor to notify a
patient when subpoenaed for a medical record.
That means a patient who agrees to transfer medical records to an
external health service run by Google or Microsoft could be
unwittingly making it easier for the government or some other legal
adversary to obtain the information, Dixon said.
If the medical records aren't protected by HIPPA, the information
conceivably also could be used for marketing purposes.
Google, which runs the Internet's most lucrative ad network, typically
bases its marketing messages on search requests and the content on Web
pages and e-mail contained in its computers.
It's not clear how Google intends to make money from its health
service. The company sometimes introduces new products without ads
just to give people more reason to visit its Web site, betting the
increased traffic will boost its profits in the long run.
© MMVIII The Associated Press
.
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