At a press-packed, early morning event,
Google launched its long anticipated health initiative, Google Health today.
The company's closest friends were there -- including Dean Ornish, a hot-shot health guru and UCSF professor; and the room was full of reps from Google partners, including Long's Drugs, Walgreens, and the Cleveland
Clinic.
Conspicuously missing from the event? Insurance providers. Not one, despite Google VP Marissa Mayer's promise that there will be "thousands" of partners to come.
"We haven't explored [insurer partnerships] to date because we understand that it's very sensitive for consumers," Mayer said.
It's a prudent decision given the amount of concern surrounding Google Health. The service, which has been under development for more than two years, is meant to serve as a central, digital depository for medical records and health information. Users can import medical records and create a profile (including allergies, immunizations, medications, etc.), which are stored in a database, and available to users' individual doctors. Eventually, people may be able to upload data from other electronic devices -- including their shoes or their pedometers -- in order to track personal health progress.
The obvious objection to the initiative is that it would be a potential disaster if users' medical records get into the wrong hands. Google has responded to skepticism by repeating -- over and over again -- that user privacy is of tremendous concern.
"Privacy is in the control of each user," said Roni Zeiger, the Google Health Product Manager. "We will not sell users' data, and we will not share it unless the user has asked us to."
And although Zeiger suspects the company could accumulate valuable data -- he says the company does not expect to market it or sell it.
"It doesn't make sense to sell it. If we do have data that's of value to the medical community -- [such as] 10 percent of diabetics got a flu shot last year -- we might be willing to publish something on that, but [the data] could never be tied to an individual and we would never sell it," Zeiger says.
For the moment, Google Health looks like a charity operation. The company won't serve ads on the site (presumably to avoid the appearance of impropriety); nor does it plan on selling data, which would likely be extremely lucrative.
Instead, the company is focused on building out the service and growing market share. That's a good thing, say industry watchers, because it could take years before the market matures and consumers are ready for the digital health revolution.
"I wish Google the best, but I think it could be four to five years [before the market catches up.] It's a long, tortuous path. There are privacy concerns, legal restrictions and regulatory issues," says Venky Harinarayan, a former venture capitalist and founder of Kosmix, parent company of RightHealth, a health search engine. "The big challenge is going to be building critical mass, rather than making money off the thing. I don't think they can try to [make money] in the near-term -- or even the intermediate term -- but it's not hard to see Google making money from this thing over time."
Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com
