| As a health care IT pro, I think you're right about the conclusions, but your reasoning is off. Google is not pulling the plug because of a technical problem with the product (security/HIPAA), but a social issue. You can have the most beautiful API, repository, and website in the world, but it's worthless without any data. Ostensibly Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault are "personal health repositories" (PHR's), and live and die based on the content, not the platform. Health care data has high complexity, lives in heterogenous silos (most of them obsolete), and has a huge variance in quality. Doctors don't understand it (and shouldn't have to), and patients certainly don't. It is certainly plausible for patients to expect that their health info is accessible to them online. With all their prowess, Google could have helped people expose their data. I do this every day with providers. Google could have built more alliances with care providers (both large and small) and helped get an initial seed of users. They announced some, but not enough. Basically the only things the mainstream media covered about PHR's so far have been their birth, and now death. Nil penetration. The health care industry needs technical help beyond Obama's stimulus, the existant products are so weak and suffer from so much technical debt... I actually Google could have done well. They just didn't follow through. Now Dr. Chrono or Practice Fusion are far better positioned. |