Monday, May 19, 2008

Google Health: Game Changing


Live: Google Health Launching At Factory Tour of Search

It looks like Google Health will be a game changer in the healthcare space. I've been working in healthcare IT since 2000. Most of our industry time is spent integrating systems using clunky protocols like HL7. HL7 works but this "standard" still costs approximately $10,000 for each connection. And one companies "HL7 compliant" is another companies text import/ export.

If Google can tie all our medical record data into one location and allow for independent companies to work with this data for importing and exporting medical records, we have a game change.

Just picture this, clinic XYZ wants to move to the 21st century but can't spend $1,000,000 to get a decent system. They still use a mixture of electronic applications but can't spend the money tieing all those systems together. So Google comes along and offers an API and cost structure that allows for off-site storage of medical information. Nothing fancy, no billing or insurance claims just medical records. The small clinic can hire someone for $10,000 or less to create 1 connection to Google's API.

Accessing the information will be free for both the healthcare entity(s) and for the individual whose information the record is concerning. When a patient wants to go to small clinic2, then they just give permission to the new clinic to read their health record and change the relationship with the original clinic so that they can only read data that clinic has contributed.

Presto! Now we have 2 clinics that can offer some of the same services the big hospitals can without spending millions to do it.

No comments:

Post a Comment