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Google Health Open Platform Is Great — Or Awful
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:25 AM
from the now-that's-a-dialectic dept.
from the now-that's-a-dialectic dept.
JackPowers writes "The Google Health APIs enable portable, standardized, open architecture, extensible personal health records, which is nice but boring if they're just used to manage the paperwork of the doctor/patient relationship. But once the data is set free, all kinds of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 apps are possible. This article looks ahead 10 years at Best Case Scenarios. A follow-up article lists the Worst Case Scenarios."
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Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
This is already a big problem with credit companies becoming so pervasive. It's also bad enough that private companies are leading the American military around by the nose. But that pales in comparison to the actual, direct, and personal limits imposed by something like the system the article is talking about.
Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly this practice should be outlawed and companies that do so need to be fined heavily.
also the fact taht your credit report is probably the MOST INNACURATE information you have on you and companies make decisions based on this horribly inaccurate data.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A criminal background check, ok, not a big deal for the most part and can save a company a lot of potential headaches and/or liability.
A credit check though? What good does that do for a company? Actually, wouldn't most companies prefer employees with less than good credit ratings as they would likely be less able to leave the job?
Piss test too you say. And why can't this be left to law enforcement? Pretty serious invasion of privacy, and if there's n
Re: (Score:2)
Define impossible. My father in law doesn't have a credit rating. He lives in a rural area where most deals are done in cash. But he has to work harder and has a lower standard of living because of his choices.
You have a right to compete in the job market. But you don't have a right for a job.
Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
An insightful comment if ever I read one, but I'm afraid you're a few generations late. As a society we gave up believing in government, institutions of power or authority, religeon, civic responsibility and most all notions of tradition, and adopted instead a belief in individuality and self-fullfilment. That doesn't leave us with much, does it?
If the current trend continues and free market idealogues get to rule the day, we should expect to have everything from infrastructure to institutions ruled and run entirely by corporations (to the extent they don't already), and we'll all be working for Taco Bell or for The Brawndo Corporation.
The situation can also be viewed political terms. A good portion of the electorate really does believe that government is evil, that government can't possibly do anything as efficiently or as cheaply as business, and that taxes infringe on their God given rights, but they're only too happy to let the Walmarts of the world take over provided they can maintain the illusion they've kept a few extra dollars in their own pockets.
The people who complain about undue corporate influence on government probably don't notice that they've succumbed to those same influences in their own lives, but they might notice when there's nothing left to sell off, somebody else holds all the cards and those free-market choices they've been promised come up short.
Google, I think, is doing what any business does, and that's fulfulling an unmet need and making or trying to make a profit in doing so. The question is why we're not doing it ourselves?
Parent
Solution to already solved problem. (Score:3, Informative)
You haven't thought this through completely. (Score:3, Informative)
See: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa [hhs.gov]
Centralizing that information takes away control from us as individuals.
I specifically stated that your medical records themselves would not be centralized and that your consent to release would be required and would further fall under the clinical discretion of each of your medical providers.
The only thing I was suggesting is that for emergency purposes, it would be possible to quickly locate records sources that you have explicitly authorized. Whether or not any particular
Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't have to be this way. I'm usually a big free market believer, but I'm also a vet who has been through the VA healthcare system (unfortunately named VistA). Here [fredtrotter.com] is a good piece that mentions the VA's system and how it is being used by an FOSS project to get some of this under control.
I don't particularly like Google, but I like the US healthcare system even less.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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You can do something about bad credit. Most health problems are outwith your control (cancer, car accident, genetic problems ...)
Awful? (Score:3, Funny)
Great, Web *3.0* (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What, everyone gets bingo too fast on their Web 2.0 bingo cards [0bingo.com] so the next version of bingo cards needs new entries and thus is Web 3.0?
Re:Great, Web *3.0* (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Great, Web *3.0* (Score:4, Funny)
A synergistic development model.
Grassroots support.
Enterprise level uptime and support (obviously).
This technology promises to create a paradigm shift in the way we think about web services.
Parent
agreed with the worst case. (Score:2)
Re:agreed with the worst case. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless this is mandated by somebody or other, you're free to post or not post whatever you want on Google health.
That's fine, but it does severely limit the usefulness of the product. As a physician, I'm not going to be inclined to spend much time looking at a highly edited version of somebody's medical history. There is a reason we ask for records from doctors or hospitals. It's far too easy to simply edit out the uncomfortable bits of your life. That of course, is perfectly within your rights, but my job is too look at the whole history, not bits and pieces.
I don't see this as taking off much in the professional sector - it may be popular in the direct-to-consumer advertising space (which is why I cynically suspect it exists), but it's too limited to be much use professionally. Not useless, but very limited.
The truly scary part is that the "10 worst" scenarios are much more likely to come true that the "10 best".
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen large parts of mine and most of seems worthless to me. Lots of redundancy, lots of unreadable scratching. Medications and treatments that didn't work but contain no follow up that would communicate that.
And I'm not very old and I've been in relativ
but you're an amateur (Score:5, Insightful)
That's as logical as thinking that it would take Linus Torvalds as long to understand a kernel patch as J. Random User who's never coded a line in his life. Or that your car mechanic needs to carefully listen to every sound your jalopy makes to know whether it needs a valve job. Or that the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic would have to get out a tuning fork and go carefully around to listen to each of his 150 musicians to know whether the orchestra is playing in tune.
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Re:agreed with the worst case. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in Alaska, come up and visit. Bring your harpoon....
"Taking the time to read your entire medical history" may or may not be particularly relevant. If you are young and healthy without significant ongoing issues, it may be perfectly unnecessary. I likely don't care about the details of your tonsilectomy at age 6 (I might, however, if you had a significant anesthetic reaction).
But you bring up a good point that's generally obfuscated in these debates: You may not want every detail of a person's medical history at any given time. Sometimes you do. Having to wade through tons of extraneous detail makes it easy to miss important tidbits. Getting a 200 page printout from a 6 day hospitalization with everything including the janitor's notes doesn't help me much. Putting that in machine readable format helps me maybe a bit. What we don't have is an underlying, consistent framework for electronic medical records that's used by everyone and has the capability to organize a huge amount of information into a generally usable format.
There are baby steps out there, but it's a huge chicken and egg problem for the field. I personally see the digitalization of medical records happening *very* slowly - over the next 20 years or so. And that's a feature, not a bug folks. There are absolutely huge societal issues to be dealt with before we give some uber-governmental department the holy grail of databases. I'd rather have the current fragmented system then allow every government and corporate entity start data mining for whatever purpose of the week they feel important (or profitable).
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Re:agreed with the worst case. (Score:4, Informative)
No ambulance in the world is going to give you an antibiotic. They're going to wait until they get to the ER and let the doc decide. Even if I, for some reason, decide that I'm giving you a drug you subsequently decide to have an anaphylactic reaction to it, well, that's why I have steroids and endotracheal tubes. If you're that sick we ask you the AMPLE history (Allergies, Medications, Past (Medical History), Last Meal, Event. If we can't get it out of you, well, then your likely sick enough to be run through some rather standardized stabilization protocols until we figure out just what you manage to do to yourself. Usually, it's readily apparent. If it's really complicated, it's likely that you are stable enough for the docs and staff to work through the problem bit by bit.
Yes, rapid access to medical information can be important and very occasionally life saving (but likely not). But Google Health isn't going to work for this. If you are unfortunate to have a serious medical condition, a small laminated paper with your doctor's name, brief past history, medication and allergies and maybe an old EKG shrunk down would do wonders. Stick in in your wallet. We always check that looking for cash, checks and your insurance card....
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Meaningless buzzwords run amok (Score:3, Funny)
Web 3.0? That's just silly.
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Oh Hell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh Hell (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Don't forget that it has to use the Wisdom of Clowns.
Weasels (Score:2)
At least until PETA complains it's cruel to the application...
[badum-ching]
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Given the subject of the story, maybe we can call it GASLAMP? (GAS=Google AJAX Something...)
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The ideas are cool (Score:5, Insightful)
But that doesn't mean they're good. Diet monitoring? Try this [freshmeat.net], or any other free web service that does it *without* needing your medical history. Fitness Monitoring? Doesn't Wii Fit do this? How about a simple spreadsheet? Travel? Is it that hard to look at The Weather Channel [weather.com] before you leave?
Honestly, this just sounds like candy-coating a terrible idea so that people will buy into it. None of the ideas on that page are lacking a non-Google implementation assuming you're not too lazy to do some footwork.
Then again, if you are too lazy, maybe whatever ill effects you receive from using Google's service are deserved...
Great - or awful? (Score:3, Funny)
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Ideally they would have been for good or for awesome.
worst case scenario? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like a win-win to me.
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I welcome the idea that those with healthy lifestyles shouldn't be subsidizing those with unhealthy lifestyles. Plus, there is then an obvious economic incentive to become healthier.
Maybe I'm just naive, but it seems to me that the *only* way to prevent healthy people from having to subsidize unhealthy people is to (1) allow health care providers to refuse to treat unhealthy people, AND (2) make everybody pay for their own health care. Anything less than that will involve some hidden subsidization via taxes, etc. (Please note I'm not saying I think it should work that way, just that subsidization is always going to be part of health care).
Also, sometimes bad health has nothing to do
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
SCHOOL RECORDS
The Turner Twins' immunization records are forwarded to their school each September. Throughout the year, their schoolmates' anonymized records are linked to the school to keep track of ear infections, strep throat, lice and sports injuries. Schools publish aggregate wellness data to attract new students, and education watchdogs lobby for funding based on overall student health indices.
School funding based on how often the children get ill? No, thanks.
INSURANCE
Trader Ted shops for insurance by selectively releasing his Google Health record on-line. He pays for regular care through a Health Savings Account, but health insurance companies bid for his catastrophic coverage based on his authenticated medical history, diet and exercise records.
No mention of what happens to someone with a disease though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or go to work for a drug company, or a healthcare provider. They see an economic incentive in keeping people in poor health.
Re:worst case scenario? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we can ban alcohol nationally, since that worked so well last time.
Oh, I know. Mandatory exercise. Not running fast enough? Well, attack dogs are cheaper that what you're costing medicare, so enough with your rights.
The idea the economics of health care must trump individual rights leads to complete regulation and control of everyone's lives as a "cost saving measure". It's totalitarianism.
But I suspect you know that, since your sig line seems to indicate you're trolling.. if so, well done.
Parent
think it through a little more (Score:4, Insightful)
More plausibly, how about someone in government thinks that lifestyle X is bad for you, and starts handing out tax penalties and rebates accordingly -- but he's wrong. Not like we've ever had any health fads that turned out to be nonsense, right? And no government bureaucrat would dream of making decisions when he doesn't really have enough information to make a good one, right?
Parent
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this system that you consider a 'win-win' is actually a more tightly controlled authoritarian system than the one in which you currently live. the only practical advantage here would be for the HMOs and insurance companies. they would be better able to price coverage.
i don't think it would require a great deal of imaginati
Re:worst case scenario? (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you are on the enforcement end, and not on the end being forced to give up all of your rights as a rational being, everything will always look win-win.
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In Other News (Score:3, Interesting)
E-Records and good thing but... (Score:3, Insightful)
If Things Get Serious...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Romeo and Juliet share STD data. They are both clean (or so the record says). Great. They can now enjoy sex with each other.
Then, over time, they decide that this relationship is really a great thing and they want to start looking into marriage. They get married. Everybody is happy.
Now that they're married (because nobody would be stupid enough to share this type of data BEFORE marriage...would they?), they share their genetic information with each other as they are talking about children. But, what's this?! Juliet sees that Romeo has a high propensity for Down Syndrome (or any other "disease" - take your pick). Well, this isn't good.
So, instead, Juliet decides to get a divorce and go on her merry way.
The End
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Web 1.0 was "It's a series of tubes."
Web 2.0 is "It's a cloud."
Web 3.0 will be "It's pixie dust and fairie magic".