No, the health care situation in US is just perfect. Don't you try to do anything there big bad tech. companies. All they are going to spend their budget on is to personally identify people with sensitive health issues (eg. erectile dsyfunction) and serve them more ads. Sad! /s
You're blind if you think this is for "healthcare innovation". It's for bolstering what they know about users for advertising, and to combine with their recent Fitbit purchase. How could you possibly still view Google as an innocent company with everyone's best interests at heart?
I would examine your biases to see if they are not clouding your judgment and ability to see the other side.
Without restraint, these efforts will undeniably bolster their ability to conduct targeted advertisements, which is bad. Hopefully regulation and consumer backlash will take care of that.
But you cannot deny the amount of good we stand to gain from an advanced electronic health system. The insights that can be generated from cross correlation of all patient data, the amount of preventative measures that can be taken from detecting problems before they become bigger problems... The benefits far outweigh the negatives. It's unthinkable to have all this data and NOT attempt to find insights in them.
There is no circumstance where you can reasonably state the positives outweigh the negatives. You are conflating a vague improved digital health system, with google blatantly gaining access to millions of people’s health data without consent. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I’m all for people opting in, but to have no say over random google employees accessing my health data? There’s no way that’s a positive. Perhaps check your own biases? Thanks
They employ a lot of talented people and they are among the few organizations that have the resources and will to actually solve these intricate problems, so more power to them as far as I'm concerned.
Tautologically, you've described every organization in the health tech space. Having a surveillance company secretly start transacting patient health information for their own profit isn't a solution in search of any problem I want solved.
Does a good system have the potential to be good for patients? Sure. Will Google do that? Probably not. There's no incentive for them to improve health care for the patients; there's no profit. There is, however, profit in ads, and in increasing insurance margins for insurers and those funding insurance.
I'd like to think that Google is concerned about more than just profit, but they prove again (censored search for China) and again (YouTube policy changes) and again that they are not. Profit rules Google's decisions.
And that is why there's such backlash against Google getting this data. Because the chances of anything good for us as patients is slim to non-existent.
> There's no incentive for them to improve health care for the patients
The healthcare systems they are collaborating with (e.g. Mayo) are strongly motivated to improve health of their patients, particularly in capitated models like accountable care organizations. Mayo is actually pretty famous for adopting the ACO model. Note the author on this article (1) from Mayo Clinic Proceedings is by David Shulkin, who went on to become the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
You may also be interested to know Ascension is another ACO (2).
So why would an ACO be motivated to work with Google? Because they know reducing diagnostic variance is almost certainly identical to improving quality of diagnosis, which will reduce poor outcomes and reduce malpractice, cost of overtreatment, cost of undertreatment, and so on.
I hadn't heard of ACOs before. Those seem to be some pretty awesome organizations; it does a lot to temper my frustration at the handover of this data.
Do we have any assurances that Google's efforts will be limited to improving care? Or are they being compensated by being able to use that data in other opportunities?
I'm pretty confident they are going to be laser-focused on improving care and will actively shed any work that doesn't advance that goal. Not only their business actions, but also their leadership choices.
In terms of business actions, lets look at the NHS brew-haha. Hard to blame Google for NHS screwing up the research protocol that led to the specific 1.6M patient records being transferred to Deep Mind. And they corrected the research process years ago. They passed muster with Mayo (a deal that no doubt had to pass muster with Shulkin among other world-renown physicians and administrators). They have deals with McKesson, Cleveland Clinic, and now Ascension. These are major players.
Their leadership choices give you additional insight on their motives. Their new Chief Health Officer is Karen DeSalvo, former National Coordinator for Health IT and Acting Assistant Secretary of HHS (and no doubt candidate for next Secretary of HHS). David Feinberg, their new VP for Health, is coming from serving as CEO of Geisinger and UCLA prior to that. These people are reputationally allergic to mixing medicine with adtech.
And there is nothing wrong about monetary profit as motivation, the pursuit of profits has elevated the living standards of billions around the world saving countless lives.
The pure pursuit of profit has also created sweatshops, blood diamonds, monopolies (and increased consumer costs), and union busting.
Profit itself is a dangerous motivation. Profit tempered by morals is what will improve lives. Google is showing that their drive for profits is not being tempered by morals.
The headline is not alarming enough. This is being done without proper consent from patients and the healthcare "innovation" is likely to be inaccessible to many of those same patients due to how unaffordable health care (including preventative care) is in the US.
Edit: It basically doesn't matter what procedure Google's algorithm says you should get. If your insurance doesn't want to cover it, you're not getting it.
Evidently "consent" isn't lawfully required. The hope is that any breakthrough might lower healthcare costs, and in the worst case scenario at least some patients might benefit which is still a win.
Ethics != law. Just because it's lawful doesn't mean it's ethical or that we shouldn't be outraged.
Edit:
> The hope is that any breakthrough might lower healthcare costs
Perhaps then Google should instead lobby hard for single-payer. Most countries with a single-payer systems have lower health care costs than the US. It's a proven solution that will lower costs, not a "hope".