John Sharp is an IT Manager for a major medical center in Northeast Ohio. Areas of expertise include: ehealth, personal health records, Web 2.0 technologies, social media and project management. He is active in the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society and the American Medical Informatics Association. The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author.
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Posts Tagged ‘Google’
Book Review: Googled-The End of the World as We Know It
February 27, 2010
I recently completed this book by Ken Auletta who promotes his unique access to the search engine giant. The books follow the history of Google from the earliest days of the founders at Stanford, to rocketing to fame, going public and then being labeled as the evil empire. More recently, he chronicles conflicts with the government, traditional media, traditional advertising, publishers and China. He leaves with Google at a crossroads of maturing founders which he suggests may be losing focus, competitors in social media, and ongoing challenges from Microsoft and others.
The book describes each new major app and the process and culture of building new tools and keeping them free. Only two pages are devoted to Google Health, however. Generally, the books focuses much more on the advertising business which has made lead to Google’s financial success sometimes overshadows description of apps and the engineering culture. Too many pages are devoted to the failing of traditional media and, of course, Google and the competition continue to evolve since the publication of the book.
The closing question in the book is: has Google become so big and entangled in conflict that it has lost its innovative edge? Recently the excitement over Google Wave and Buzz have met there match with Apple’s iPad. Yet the dominance of cloud computing and Google’s dominance in the cloud may continue to have more of a long term impact than the devices that connect to the cloud.
Google Scholar – A Personal Journey
September 26, 2009
The Krafty Librarian has taken on Google Scholar and discusses the good and bad of its search results from a medical librarian’s perspective. This led me on a vanity search of my own publications. Good news – by searching for “Sharp JW” & “Cleveland Clinic” most of my previous publications came up. What was interesting was to see citations. I had no idea how may articles and books used some of my publications. For instance, a search of “Sharp JW” & “Prostate Cancer” shows many citations in books especially from some of my quality of life and internet and cancer articles. Also came across an abstract on LVADs and quality of life I had forgotten about.
While there may be some limitations of Google Scholar, some of the features are a real plus.
Two More Articles on the Health 2.0 Conference
November 5, 2008
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.
Google Health Updates
October 16, 2008
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.
Google Health – Interview with Missy Krasner
October 2, 2008
In a podcast interview for Modern Healthcare, Missy Krasner discusses Google Health including the early partnership with Cleveland Clinic and others. She emphasizes the value proposition of portability of healthcare information through Google Health. Slow adoption of PHRs she attributes to lack of interoperability and patients/consumers not being at the center of health care provision. Part of Google’s goal by opening up their API is to encourage innovation among small companies to add value. Also, by adding it to Google’s suite of products like email and calendaring, the hope is that Google Health will become part of one’s daily workflow.
My question is: how will we see this happen? Is anyone measuring this, researching adoption, promoting integration. I hope we will begin to see more reports of this in the press and professional Health IT journals. Or how about an offical Google blog just for Google Health?
Google Launches Knol – Authoritative Knowledge
July 25, 2008
On the official Google Blog, some of the reasons for the development of Knol are explained. It looks like an opportunity to have vetted content which has a name of an authority on the topic assigned to it. This is different than a lot of the anonymous content on the web, and a different approach than Wikipedia which uses many authors who compete for defining topics. However, the tool does allow for “moderated collaboration”, meaning that someone can suggest a change to a Knol which the author(s) may accept or reject.
Many of the articles are on health care. At first, it appeared that many authors were from the San Francisco area but on further investigation, there were some from other parts of the country.
How will this fit into Google Search? Or Google Health? I think it has some real possibilities here.
Top Web Programmer Receives His Due in Time Magazine
June 12, 2008
It is not often that the guys and gals working behind the scenes doing the hard core programming on PHRs and other healthcare applications get their due. This time Bob Lemon, my friend and long time programmer at the Cleveland Clinic gets first paragraph mention in an article in Time Magazine titled, “Medical Mouse Practice.” Bob is responsible for much of the custom programming behind the eCleveland Clinic websites including MyChart. The article on EHRs talks about the 700 people like Bob who support the infrastructure which makes the EHR, PHR and ehealth tools possible. Bob also can take credit for the Google Walk For Good gadget.
Google Health and More
May 20, 2008
Today in a webcast from the Googleplex, Google Health was opened to the public. All the features are now available to the U.S. at least. I participated in the pilot for the Cleveland Clinic as a participant in MyChart and found it easy to use, to import information and add more specifics. Now I can import my Google Health profile back into MyChart. Pretty cool. Also added the Walk for Good widget to my iGoogle home page. 100 users have signed up already.
This has already hit the tech and mainstream news outlets already with discussions about privacy, questions about Google’s motivation and benefits for consumers.
I think Google is adding some value here. There are making an effort to protect privacy while promoting health. And their partnerships indicate a desire to make this a broad umbrella for addressing health care issues.
I encourage you to try Google Health before making a quick judgement.
Inside the Black Box: Technological Innovation at Google
March 17, 2008
A presentation by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP of Product Management at Google, Inc. at Claremont McKenna College begins to open the black box of how Google thinks. He brings in concepts from Wikinomics and The Long Tail in addition to other sources to illustrate his points. Here are some of them.
- work in small teams of 3 – avoid work from home
- Argue everything with data, don’t present a new product by saying “I think” or using external data
- don’t write a product plan – just do it, try it out
- Think big -created a process to underachieve on very big goals but reward workers for them
- understand the technology base case – Moore’s Law, Kreider’s law of storage
- focus on the customer
- Accept a small piece of the pie
My question is how can these be translated to other companies and especially health care? Maybe start small in development environments as entrepreneurial opportunities.
Google Health Presented at HIMSS
February 29, 2008
Eric Schmidt and Roni Zeiger presented Google Health at a keynote session at HIMSS in Orlando this morning.
Key points included:
- it’s the consumer’s data, the user has control
- it needs to have ease of use – the user interface must be immediately useful
- the benefit of consumer interoperability is significant
- cloud computing will allow the storage of medical records including large files like images, “easy” to accomplish for Google (200 petabytes of xrays per year not a problem)
- adoption of new consumer products are typically 5% the first year but 80-90% in 10 years
- developers are invited to create new tools around the platform of Google Health. How about child immunization records, managing the health information and medication for your elderly parent in another state.
With this kind of optimism, could adoption exceed expectations?
