Google And Microsoft Looking To Change Health Care

The New York Times reports that both Google and Microsoft may soon be entering the online health care market. Will there be a link to “Google Health” at the top of the company's home page? According to the Times, the project is still an internal prototype and unlikely to be available even as a beta for some time.

The article does, however, offer a tantalizing glimpse at what Google Health could look like:

A presentation of screen images from the prototype ??? which two people who received it showed to a reporter ??? then has 17 other Web pages including a “health profile” for medications, conditions and allergies; a personalized “health guide” for suggested treatments, drug interactions and diet and exercise regimens; pages for receiving reminder messages to get prescription refills or visit a doctor; and directories of nearby doctors.

Google executives would not comment on the prototype, other than to say the company plans to experiment and see what people want. “We'll make mistakes and it will be a long-range march,” said Adam Bosworth, a vice president of engineering and leader of the health team. “But it's also true that some of what we're doing is expensive, and for Google it's not.”

Also worth noting in the Times piece is the way that the web has already changed how many of us approach health care. Of particular interest is the future-of-health-care portrait painted by John D. Halamka, a doctor and the chief information officer of the Harvard Medical School, who sees the future of health care on the web.

With more and more people using WebMD or Google to research symptoms before they see a professional, Halamka tells the Times that “the doctor is becoming a knowledge navigator… in the future, health care will be a much more collaborative process between patients and doctors.”

And that image probably won't be limited to your symptoms, but may well extend to patient records. “Patients will ultimately be the stewards of their own information,” says Halamka who believes that eventually we will control our records rather than the institutions that provide the care.

Halamka's vision might be a bit utopian given the nature of the health care industry and it also raises some additional questions — who hosts the records? And do you want Microsoft or Google in on the management of your health history?

[via Google Operating System, image credit]