eHealth » Google Health

Google Health: New Features, Fit and Trim

John Sharp — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 02:04:25 +0000

Today Google Health launched a major update. Many of the features were part of the demo at HIMSS 2010 include the flexible graph feature for lab results. As with the previous version, editing information is easy and intuitive. In viewing individual lab results, a definition is in the right column along with news and articles from Google Scholar – contextual information. Usability research was an important aspect of the updates which included adding new features:

“Dedicated wellness tracking including pre-built and custom trackers

Efficient manual data entry as well as automatic data collection through devices

A customizable summary dashboard of wellness and other health topics

Goal setting and progress tracking using interactive charts

Personalized pages for each topic with rich charts, journaling, and related information.”

In additional, new partnerships round out the offering: Fitbit, Cardiotrainer, and WorkSmartLabs. So it appears that in lieu of making Google Health a mobile app itself, they have partnered with mobile app developers particularly around wellness and exercise. Although Google Health displays well on an iPad browser in landscape view.

Three new provider partnerships are announced as well, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Sharp HealthCare. Look forward to hearing more about these and how they are encouraging the use of Google Health. UPMC is an Epic shop with MyChart.

The announcement has led to lots of buzz in blogs and twitter including “Google Health Unbound: Can It Overcome Indifference to Personal Health Records?” and Google Health Takes a Big Step Forward by Dr. Dean Ornish on Huffington Post.

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New PHR Report from California Healthcare Foundation

John Sharp — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:47:16 +0000

Titled “Consumers and Health Information Technology: A National Survey“, the survey shows some promising progress:

users cite taking steps to improve their own health, knowing more about their health care, and asking their doctors questions
lower-income adults, those with chronic conditions, and those without a college degree are more likely to experience positive effects of having their information accessible online
Two-thirds remain concerned about the privacy and security
should not let privacy concerns stop us from learning how health IT can improve health care
almost half are interested in medical devices that can be connected to the Internet.
Of those who do not have a PHR, 40% express interest in using one.

Also just released is a major report from Price Waterhouse Coopers, The customization of diagnosis, care and cure. A key part of this report is patient touchpoints inlcuding:

coordinated care teams
fluent navigators
patient experience benchmarks
medical proving grounds
care anywhere networks (aka, mHealth).

The common theme here is participatory medicine, which as it turns out, appeared in a post by Roni Zeiger of Google Health in Huffinton Post. His key quote is, “Data on its own is useless. It’s all about conversations.” Health data whether in personal health records or social networking sites or other tools is essential in creating a conversation about how to improve and maintain health.

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Google Public Data Explorer for Healthcare

John Sharp — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:42:20 +0000

Google recently released its public data explorer which combines the Google visualization tools with public datasets include population data and health data. For healthcare, the initial launch includes Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the U.S. and Cancer cases in the U.S. The charts allow selection by state and time options. For these two charts, CDC data sources are used.

So could this data explorer be used more broadly with other health data sets. For starters, those at Data.gov (although most of the health data sets are Medicare cost data). But could major disease registries open themselves up to this API so that medical researchers could visualize more data sources and generate more research questions more quickly. This could be one solution for the for the lethal lag time. The CDC has additional data sets available. But what about opening closed data sets, such as, those from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons or other disease-specific registries. Then there is the growing volume of patient reported data from sites like PatientsLikeMe and CureTogether.

The limitation of this approach is having researchers capable of interpreting these data visualizations to make meaningful interpretations. The peer review process would prevent publication of misinterpretations of the data. An additional control would be combining the data explorer with social networking tools for users to discuss visualizations and research observations of the data. Perhaps this could be accomplished through Google Wave.

Comments and data sets welcome.

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Major Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Report on PHRs

John Sharp — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:25:08 +0000

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has published an 7 chapter online book about Personal Health Records. The book is a great summary of the current state of PHRs as well as initiatives promoted by Project Health Design. Chapters are:

Chapter 1: Personal Health Records 101
Chapter 2: Project HealthDesign and the Next Generation of Personal Health Records
Chapter 3: Observations of Daily Living
Chapter 4: The Health Information Technology Landscape
Chapter 5: Personal Health Records and Health Information Technology—Costs, Policies and the Incentives Driving Adoption
Chapter 6: Privacy and Personal Health Records
Chapter 7: Personal Health Records—Business Models, Open Platforms and the Challenges Ahead

Worthy of note is chapter 3 on Observations of Daily Living (ODL), the importance of having patients enter their own daily activities and disease experience into a PHR. While the chapter does not specifically mention social networking sites like Organized Wisdom or PatientsLikeMe, the implication is that these type of tools provide value, often unrealized, by most provider organizations. ODLs could also include direct input into a tethered PHR or via home monitoring devices.

Also presented well is the discussion of the Health IT landscape and the emphasis on open platforms. Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health are described as revolutionary innovations. They provide PHRs with open connections to EHRs and devices as well as a portable, web-based record empowering patients to bring their records to any provider.

They conclude with addressing business models and incentives to make PHRs successful. “Open platforms create a wide avenue for innovation in health care” and the need to move past proprietary models is promoted. I might add that existing proprietary EMRs must be able to talk to the open platforms through web services or the CCR standard. There is no excuse for not adapting to these standards to enable the transfer of data into patients’ control.

Looking toward future and the new grant recipients for Project Health Design, the authors conclude: “They will face a number of challenges, including how to capture observations of daily living (ODLs); how to aggregate and analyze those data in a PHR; how to use the findings to inform the clinical encounter; and, ultimately, how to empower patients to understand, influence and improve their health. ”

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Social Media and Search in Health Care

John Sharp — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:35:31 +0000

Several new stories popped up today:

Microsoft’s secret weapon against Google: Health search – although this reviewer sees a some temporary advantage over Google Health search, he notes that even more important is a search within a simple-to-use electronic medical records system for consumers and does not see either as doing a good job of this yet
Oncologists Using Twitter to Advance Cancer Knowledge: about physicians using twitter for “Disseminating, correcting, and expanding information in conversation with professional colleagues”
Boundary Erosion in Information Technology: John Glaser points out how social media and other consumer-oriented technologies as risk to Healthcare IT but also sees “Boundary erosion is an underlying, unalterable trend in information technology. It will not reverse itself.” He encourages a balance between unbridled enthusiasm and blocking these technologies.

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New Google Health Features

John Sharp — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:29:00 +0000

Google Health recently announced two new features: upload of scanned paper documents and recording of last wishes. Uploading of documents provides a useful way to manage legacy paper documents during the transition to electronic records. Since most people still rely on paper records, this move makes sense as an interim solution.
Another scanned document type is advanced directives for which Google Health has partnered with Caring Connections. Advanced directives are important for anyone to have, especially those with advanced disease or entering the hospital. It will be helpful in the future if this could be sent to a hospital directly.
Google Health admits to the limitations of paper documents and the need to move beyond these.
The post is by Roni Zeiger, a physician, and Julie Wilner, R.N, a program manager. Its good to see that a nurse is now a part of this initiative.
I look forward to more tools from Google Health and hopefully these will roll out on a regular schedule.

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New Features for Google Health

John Sharp — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:47:00 +0000

Google Health has rolled out a new feature to allow users to share their profiles. This could include your provider, family members or others. It gives view only access to those users. There is also an option for printing a wallet size version of medications, allergies, conditions and treatments. This could be helpful in an emergency. Other options in an emergency are: have a family member login or share a login with and ER or have your login in your wallet although this is not preferred and not stated by Google as an option because of the obvious privacy risks. Although some have criticized this print feature, the fact of the matter is that most consumers have some printed records at home if not in their wallet. A smart card might be preferred but only if there is a national standard that can be read at all hospitals. No perfect answers here yet but a great improvement over paper records and a move closer to a national standard for PHRs or PHR platforms.
Also new on Google Health is the ability to graph medical test information. Wouldn’t it be great if portions of this could be exported to one’s profile on another site, such as, PatientsLikeMe? All in due time.

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PHRs going way of online banking?

John Sharp — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:33:00 +0000

According to Roni Zeiger of Google Health, PHRs may follow the pattern of online banking. Speaking at the Towards an Electronic Patient Record conference, he predicted that like the early suspicions about online banking and now general acceptance, a similar adoption of PHRs will occur as consumers find utility in the tools which are available. He rejected the idea that stronger privacy laws will bring wider adoption. He also notes the concerns of physicians interacting with PHRs – if they are going to view patient data from these, it needs to be simple and fit into their current workflow of information.
While we’re not there yet, the is some progress in adoption and he emphasized Google’s long term commitment to this initiative.

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Two More Articles on the Health 2.0 Conference

John Sharp — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:07:00 +0000

Neil Versel has written two articles from the conference which emphasize the optimistic outlook for Health 2.0 products.

The first quotes Robert Kolodner saying that Health 2.0 is in the early hype cycle. He also cited Enoch Choi of MedHelp who said that half of the panel last year on physician social networks are out of business but that the future is still bright, perhaps because the conference attracted 1000 attendees including many from mainline healthcare organizations and employers.

The second article is about Google Health and quotes Roni Zeiger who said that user feedback, much of which was from the pilot with the Cleveland Clinic, reflects enthusiasm for the product and the desire for more features. In discussing medication history, he said “Right now, Google Health’s role is “helping to build the pipes” for interoperable data exchange.” See also the recent announcement about Google Health’s deal with PatientAssistance.com to enable prescription assistance services from its PHR.

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Google Health Updates

John Sharp — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:31:00 +0000

Google Health has added some usability to make it accessible to the blind by enabling text readers. This will not only benefit those using Google Health but also those who pull their data from PHRs which don’t have these features.

Also, there is a new posting on ReadWriteWeb on Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault as Coke and Pepsi flavors of PHR platforms. Microsoft states, “introducing a new type of consumer health solution is a long-term endeavor.”
“This whole space is still so small, and has such huge potential, that we can both grow huge and succeed without bumping heads. Later on, head-to-head competition will probably be more important.” These platforms are very new but quickly growing their partner networks. It is difficult to see advantages yet so recommendations to consumers at this point are tough.

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