Parallelnormal is yours to take (with attribution, please), under a 
Google’s new health records service aggregates your electronic medical records — your prescriptions, diagnosis, test results, you name it. The benefit to advertisers (i.e., targeted marketing) is clear.
The government can also call dibs on your personal data at any time. (See the excerpt from Google Health’s privacy policy, below.) The fed’s interests in your data, of course, are potentially limitless: Did you get your vaccinations? Are you on psychiatric meds? The CDC, DHS, NIH, the Attorney General’s Office… they all want to know.
Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is participating in the service. So, I tried pairing my BIDMC records with a Google Health account. But my data did not seem to transfer over.
I deleted my Google Health account after this failed experiment. I will eat my hat if the data have truly been deleted from Google’s databases.
Any possible benefits to consumers from Google Health clearly outweigh the privacy risks at this point.
And I am left wondering whether this might prove Google’s “first flop.” — mb
Google Privacy Center - Privacy Policy
e have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.
Filed under: AI, Bioethics, Boomertech, Boston, Google, Government, Health, Homeland Security, Internet, Media, Monitoring, Personal tech, Privacy, Surveillance, marketing | Tagged: beth isreal deaconess medical center, Boston, Google, Health
I’m sorry to hear that you had a lousy experience with the service. I think individual control over medical data that allows interoperability across providers and insurers is important.
One question I have: Why is PatientSite so poorly designed, if BIDMC supports this idea too? Have you ever tried to share your lab results with another provider? Forget about printing them out, you need to log in, and click, then scroll, click, then scroll. Easily remedied problem, but indicative of a mindset.
Google Health? is just another con like MySpace, Facebook etc to collect data.. and data is to designed to control and nothing more. If you do not know what people ( we peasants) are thinking then it makes it harder for them to control us in a predictable manor. I plan to stay unpredictable. Have a great day!
Vapo
Mark - I’m at Google right now and thus far about 100,000 folks have used the Google Health site. Over 100 Patients from BIDMC have successfully linked their records (including me!). If you’re running into any problems linking your records, just click on the Patientsite Tech Support link in the Patientsite sidebar and we’ll work with you.
I’m on Google’s Advisory council and the entire council has been very strict with Google about privacy policies. Deleted data is truly deleted. Here’s an overview of the privacy policies used for the site
http://www.google.com/health_hipaa.html
If the privacy policies have as much control over the government as our constitution thne there will be no privacy. Plain and simple. They will do as they please and take whatever info they deem interested or needed.
I noticed your article about Personal Health Records (we were part of Google Health’s launch). As a freelance journalist, I started writing about these a couple of years ago and was so impressed by one of them, MyMedicalRecords.com, that I recently joined to company to handle its media relations. You may find this of interest for future articles. If you go to our site, you’ll find privacy, security, and usability issues nicely addressed.
Contrasting MMR to other companies in the PHR space, MMR delivers the most user-friendly, convenient and versatile web-based personal health record available today. Using proprietary patent pending technologies, complete patient information including actual lab test results, radiology reports and images, progress notes and all of a patient’s charts can be faxed, voiced or uploaded into the user’s password-secured account. Users do not need to install any special software or use any special hardware to use our service.
MMR also has integrated other advanced features, such as multilingual translation, a drug interaction database of more than 20,000 medications, calendaring for prescription refills and doctor appointments, and private voicemail for a doctor’s message and other personal uses.
There also is a special “Emergency Log-In” feature that allows a doctor to access a user’s account to view their most important medical information in the event of a medical emergency. To ensure individual privacy, specific data, such as prescriptions, allergies, blood type and copies of actual medical files or images, are pre-selected by the user for inclusion in the online read-only Emergency Folder. The site has been repeatedly tested to be sure no unauthorized person can break into any account.
In addition, MMR also includes an online ESafeDeposit Box feature that enables users to securely store any important document in a virtual “lock box” and access them anytime from anywhere using an Internet-connected computer or PDA. These documents can include advanced directives, wills, insurance policies, birth certificates, photos of Family, pets and property, and more. MMR is clearly one of the most complete user-friendly personal health records available today. I can provide you with more extensive information how MMR compares with other products on the market.
Incidentally, when Google Health was launched on May 19, MMR was included as an integrated service on its platform. This will enable users to move information from their Google Health account to their MyMedicalRecords account and vice versa. This will enhance the Google Health user experience by allowing the individual to store documents, images, and other personal information in MMR’s easy-to-use personal health record and will have the benefit of all the additional features MMR has that are not available directly within Google Health.
I would encourage you to visit MMR and join with a complimentary membership. Simply go to http://www.mymedicalrecords.com and sign up using registration code MMRMEDIA. I believe you will impressed with how comprehensive and easy-to-use it is. I will contact you after you have had a chance to experience the service with the hope that you will include us in any further discussions of the subject.
Sincerely,
Scott S. Smith
Director of Public Relations
MyMedicalRecords.com
10100 Santa Monica Blvd. #430
Los Angeles CA 90067
Ext 123 (Cell: 310/254-4051)
[email protected]
Encl.
[...] Dr. John Halamka, CIO at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, sat on a Google Health advisory board. He discusses the new program and attempts to assuage security concerns. Also, our friends over at Universalhub.com connect us to a blogger who is, understandably, concerned about privacy. [...]