Google Launches Google Health Beta
Posted: May 20th, 2008
Yesterday, Google Health Beta was launched with praises from some and to the dismay of others. The idea of a Google service for health care providers had been speculated as early as July of 2006, with a confirmation of the Google Health project by CEO Eric Schmidt in February of 2008.
Google Health is primarily a medical database contain information like age, gender, medical conditions, medications, allergies, and so forth. There are also tools for finding online health services and/or doctors.
Google Health Beta screenshot:
Rising Privacy Concerns
Anything that combines "online" and "personal information" begets privacy concerns, and you can bet that personal medical records will cause quite a stir. But Google is a technology behemoth and surely has sufficient security measures in place… right?
Thus far, only a password is necessary to access your Google Health account. There isn’t any biometric security and since most people’s password is the same for everything, your personal medical history isn’t all that secure.
When it comes to any online health software, there is always concern about privacy and security issues.
It’s an interesting concept and I will certainly be keeping an eye out on the development of Google Health and how the majority of health care professionals feel about this.
There are thousands of hospitals, some even government owned which do not protect their patient medical records with adequate security measures. Why not target those companies too?
Stealing medical records from a hospital is a lot harder to get away with than online.