Tag: Google

Google Health: Is It Good For You?

Oct 7, 2008• 4

By AMY TENDERICH

Note: Amy Tenderich, who writes and maintains the wonderful Diabetes Mine,
just did this very illuminating interview with Google Health’s Missy
Krassner. As you’ll see, she doesn’t slow-pitch to Missy. This is a
sure-footed, tough-minded exchange about the real issues that are on
the table now in Health 2.0. – Brian Klepper

Slowly but surely, using the Internet for your health needs is
becoming as mainstream as shopping on the web: no longer futuristic,
but is it for everyone? And perhaps more importantly, are mainstream
commercial health platforms from companies like Google and Microsoft
really useful for people with specific chronic illnesses? I thought it
would be interesting to hear their side of the story.

Missykrasner_3
So please welcome Missy Krasner, Product Marketing Manager for Google Health, whom I was lucky enough to catch up with for an interview last week.

Missy, shortly after Google Health launched last Spring, David Kibbe, former Director of Health IT for the AAFP, noted
that most of its services were “only mildly useful and sort of
‘toyish.’” How have these services evolved to be more useful to people
with health conditions?

23andme gets unwanted publicity

Sep 19, 2008• 11

By Matthew Holt

Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and husband of 23andme co-founder Anne Wojcicki, has announced that he has the gene for Parkinson’s disease and that his mother carries it to. She already has the disease, as did her aunt. Sergey has written about this on his new blog Too and it was picked up by the NY Times. Unlike the issues around Steve Jobs and his cancer, there’ll be no impact on Google’s business. If—and it’s only an “if”—Brin develops Parkinson’s it’ll be many many years from now. However, Parkinson’s is a very serious condition which people are right to dread—the father of one of my best friends has it, and his life is extremely grim.

Coincidentally I was doing my “spit” for 23andme just a few minutes ago when this story went on the NY Times site. So I can’t tell you about my results from them yet. I have though had my genome sequenced by Navigenics. Thus far none of the results have been compelling enough to make me actually do anything.

That of course is also Brin’s problem. At the moment there’s nothing he can actually do. In Genomics diagnosis is now running far far ahead of capacity for treatment.

But the hope of services like 23andme, Navigenics, DeCodeMe, and others aimed at promoting cures and treatments like CollabRx and Cure Together, is that the body of knowledge from both genomics and overall patient experiences will advance fast enough that the current situation of “more diagnosis with less ability to change the outcome” will slowly change to one where knowing your likely health future will help you avert some of the worse consequences.

Let’s hope so for Sergey’s sake and all of ours.

UPDATE: Just to clarify the headline, I don’t mean that 23andme does not warrant or deserve this publicity, or that they have done anything at all bad here. When I say "unwanted" I mean they are getting publicity for their service because of a situation that no one would want to happen to them (or to Sergey Brin). But of course that’s true for many many great health care services of all stripes.

Tags: Genomics

Adam Bosworth speaks about Google Health, Keas and everything

Sep 3, 2008• 2

By Matthew Holt

Adam_bosworth After a long period of time I’ve finally wrestled Adam Bosworth to the floor and forced
the microphone to his mouth. Adam of course is the software guru (he’s one of the originators of XML) who went to Google to start Google Health, and spent much of 2007 talking about how he hoped Google Health would change health care. He then left Google Health (several months before it launched in March 2008) and at the very end of 2007 founded Keas. Adam will be at the Health 2.0 Conference and while Keas is in stealth mode at the moment, he may just be ready to show us all a bit of Keas’ technology by then.

But he also has very strong views on health technology, data, PHRs. HealthVault & Google Health, and much much more. Listen to the interview.

Google’s strategy (mostly outside of health care)

Sep 3, 2008

By Matthew Holt

VC Fred Wilson explains where he thinks Google is going in Chrome, Android, and The Cloud. The Health 2.0 team is about 3 months into using Google Docs (especially the spreadsheet) and although Docs continues to have its teething troubles, like Fred we are hooked. I suspect we and Fred’s shop are not alone

BTW, I read the Chrome comic book today and it is a thing of beauty — taking really tough technical concepts and explaining them simply and not condescendingly. I’ll for sure be downloading Chrome when I get the chance.

Meanwhile, in health care last week David Kibbe interviewed Ronnie Zeiger at Google as part of the Great American Health 2.0 Tour. The Googleplex was a little empty as half the employees seemed to be at Burning Man. But a little way into the public release of Google Health, it does seem as they’re happy with what’s happening so far, and they remain committed to taking it seriously. (I sense a bottle of fine wine coming my way ).

On the other hand, I know for sure that Microsoft continues to take its health care business very seriously too. And yes, you’ll be able to see both of them at Health 2.0.

Omnimedix still fighting Dossia owners

Aug 13, 2008• 1

By Matthew Holt

Kleinke JD Kleinke and Omnimedix are still in business and still fighting a pretty serious lawsuit
about the Dossia breakup. I talked with JD yesterday. The team is working on several super secret client projects, but it’s tough to run a small consulting shop and keep a protracted lawsuit open, so they’re passing the hat! Why keep the lawsuit going?

Well, there’s obviously stuff that JD couldn’t tell me, so this is speculation but it’s clear that this is much more than an a “vendor didn’t deliver/client didn’t pay” dispute. JD was always very vocal about an open nonprofit being the protector of the Dossia members’ employees’ data, so I surmise that contractual disputes about who got access to what data are at the root of this. It would be interesting (if practicably impossible) to compare Dossia’s contact with Omnimedix in their contract with Indivo.

More generally, JD and I talked about whether there’s a need for a Dossia-type entity when there’s Google Health and HealthVault. Here’s what JD said about Microsoft and Google’s privacy stance.

“In both cases they’ve violated their own operating principles as businesses to do the right thing.”

Knol and web publishing challenge medical journals’ stronghold

Jul 25, 2008• 7

Robert_wachter By Bob Wachter

Yesterday, Google launched Knol, immediately branded as Google’s answer to Wikipedia. As health care adviser to the project, I’ll say a few words about Knol, but focus on how it – and other forms of electronic self-publishing – may signal the end of medical publishing as we have known it.

First, a word about Knol (the name is short for “a unit of knowledge”). Google’s vision is that providing a tool for people to write about “things that they know” will make the world a better place. Unlike Wikipedia’s anonymous, collaborative writing/editing process, Knols have authors, with names, faces, and reputations. (Authors can choose to have their identity verified, through a cross-check on their credit card or phone records.) Google provides Knolers a tool; authors enter their content and click “publish.” And poof, there it is, on the Web. Users can rate and comment on Knols, send them to friends, and suggest changes. But the author remains the sole owner of the content, able to update and modify it (or remove it) at any time.

Google Health and the PHR: Do Consumers Care?

Jul 1, 2008• 28

By Keith Schorsch Keith_2

Google Health’s unveiling last week and Microsoft’s HealthVault launch last October
are important milestones in the evolution of Health 2.0. Both of these heavyweights have the resources and potential to improve the health consumer’s customer experience. I have followed the active (and important) conversations about privacy concerns, HIPAA, and Google Health’s terms of service, which are well represented by Erik Schonfeld’s post on Techcrunch and Larry Dignan’s post on ZDnet. And I read with interest Google’s rapid response offered by Google Senior Product Counsel Mark Yang.

What’s missing from all of these conversations is the elephant in the room: Do consumers really care about having online personal health records?

Kaiser tiptoes into HealthVault & tells THCB about it, with UPDATE

Jun 9, 2008• 11

By Matthew Holt

Kaiser Permanente signed on this morning for a pretty extensive pilot with Microsoft,
allowing its 159,000 employees to copy their online health records into HealthVault. This is a big coup for Microsoft and a fairly ambitious move for KP which to this point hasn’t said much publicly about the data transferability it was going to provide for its members. This is a clear signal.

Assuming that the pilot is a success, presumably all Kaiser members using My Health Manager (over 2 million now and heading to 3 million at years end) will soon be able to move their data to HealthVault. We are potentially seeing the first real example of mass scale data interoperability onto a platform not connected to a health care organization. And obviously, Google is playing in this same space too.

Once the data is collected in HealthVault, there are lots of possibilities for what can be done with that data, and what services can be offered.

Back in the days when Justen Deal was causing havoc with HealthConnect, I had a somewhat unorthodox interview with Permanente’s Andy Wiesenthal — in which (without KP’s PR folks knowing) I called him in a taxi on a cell phone late on a Friday night. Perhaps it’s a mark of how far THCB has come (you decide if it’s good or bad) that in regular business hours on Friday, KP’s publicity machine lined me up for a pre-release interview with Peter Neupert, Corporate VP of Microsoft Health Solutions Group and Anne-Lisa Silvestre, VP of Online Services at KP.

Google Health — A serious test drive

Jun 5, 2008• 9

By Matthew Holt

After all the fuss, I thought that I should take Google Health for a real test drive. So I did. Given that it contains a gazillion screenshots, I did it in the form of a slide show and uploaded it to the slideshare.net website. To view it, you’re best off using the full screen mode (which you can get to by opening “view” (the middle of the three links below the slides, and then clicking the “full button” on the bottom right in the slide on slideshare).

| View | Upload your own

I’d of course love your comments about my conclusions.

Readers respond to Google Health launch

Jun 2, 2008

By THCB StaffGoogle’s recent launch of its Health Beta personalized health records provoked great commentary from THCB’s expert contributors and thoughtful comments from readers. Generally, readers acknowledge Google’s system is not flawless, they are enthusiastic something tangible finally exists.

But the privacy concerns persist.

In response to Matthew’s "Serious test drive," E-patient Dave wrote,"The privacy issue is simply huge. I don’t know why the advocates don’t get it. The lay people I talk to *all* express concern about it; some flat-out say "No WAY I’m giving them my data."

He continued,"I’d feel a lot better if all the enterprises that want to get into this great opportunity (and it is one) would work to get HIPAA updated to cover their case."

Keith Schorsch’s post on whether consumers care about Google Health also generated a lot of comments — mostly from people who shared his skepticism.

"While I agree that there certainly is and can be value in a PHR for
consumers, I think this is the right discussion. Do consumers even know
what a PHR is and that it is an option for them? I think Forrester’s
data shows that something like 75% of consumers don’t," George Van Antwerp wrote