If there is one industry that seems to always be expanding, it’s the medical industry.
Since the beginning of visits to the doctor, medical records have been stored in paper formats. These can easily be found when you visit your local doctor. Either along the wall or on an expanding shelf, thousands of manila folders are tagged with color-coded stickers to identify their category.
In more recent years, these offices have begun efforts to keep these files organized within a computer program on local computers.
Google may be changing all that. Google is attempting efforts that will allow personal health records (PHRs) to be stored Online.
“The Cleveland Clinic already has a PHR system dubbed eCleveland Clinic MyChart that has 100,000 patients enrolled. The Google effort is a pilot within that system–there are a bevy of lesser known software companies that provide PHR systems. Under the Google pilot the Cleveland Clinic will sign up 1,500 to 10,000 patients. The goal is to test secure exchange of data such as prescriptions, allergies and other relevant data.”
The main concern here is privacy. There are not a lot of types of information that are as sensitive as personal medical data.
“In a nutshell, these newfangled PHR systems give you some privacy protection but it’s just what’s covered in each company’s privacy policy. To me that’s a pretty big difference. The general Techmeme reaction is that you shouldn’t sign up if you’re worried about privacy. That’s true, but don’t be surprised if these efforts become HIPAA fodder in the future.”
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