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Google Wants to Put Medical Records Online

Feb 25th, 2008 • Posted in: News

Advocates say the pilot program will limit duplication and errors, but privacy advocates worry about what will happen to data

CLEVELAND
A high-tech arrangement that will put patients’ medical records online has privacy advocates worried.

USA Today reports that a pilot program will put records of several thousand Cleveland Clinic patients online through a new service offered by search engine Google. The records can be accessed by anyone to whom the patient gives permission.

Patients who enroll in Google’s program can tie all records to a single account, use Google’s search engine to find other practices that take part in the program, and share their information with a mouse-click.

The interface, called GoogleHealth, also could be used to request prescription renewals, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

An analysis by InformationWeek notes that the current system of medical records, residing largely on paper and squirreled away in various offices, results in duplication, wasted effort, and errors. But the prospect of putting medical records online faces some thorny privacy issues, including uncertainty about the way data will be handled by various service providers.

While there are strict laws about patient privacy in traditional health-care settings, there is no federal regulation about what “middle-level players can do with your data,” David Lansky, senior director of the health program at the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, a nonprofit studying information technology in health care, told BusinessWeek.

Sources: USA Today, Feb. 22 — InformationWeek, Feb. 22 — Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 22 — BusinessWeek, Feb. 22.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 28 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 31, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 3, 2007.

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