Google Health Launches Online

Google officially launched Google Health Monday. With Google Health users can share their medical data with doctors, medical testing labs and pharmacies and access it from anywhere.

Google Health launched a pilot program this February with Cleveland Clinic and was able to work with patients and doctors and shared the data electronically. After this successful pilot program, now Google is making it available for everyone and has added a number of hospitals and pharmacies.

Import medical records from hospitals and pharmacies: You can link your health profile to your hospital and share records with them. You can get a complete record of the transaction you received at the hospital or from the pharmacy. You can log on to the their websites and transfer information about your medical records or prescriptions to your Google Health profile for your records. Some of the partners are Cleveland Clinic, Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, Long Drug Store, Walgreens, CVS, RxAmerica, Quest Diagnostics, Medco and more.

View your medical history: Google Health will help track your medical history over the years. Use your profile to view a summary of your medical history, or drill down to see the details close up. Having all your health information organized and centrally located will help keep your doctors up-to-date when you visit them.

Find out how medications might interact: Once you enter all the medications, Google Health will check for any potential interactions between your drugs, allergies, and conditions and warn you. Then you and your doctor can see what is the best strategy.

Search for doctors and hospitals: Once you find out what your condition is, you can search for a doctor near you and you can add that doctor to your profile or visit the doctor’s site or find directions with the help of Google Maps.

Some are concerned about privacy problems, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search services and user experience, wants to allay those fears. She said Google will store personal health information on computers that are separate from Google’s other properties and also added an additional layer of security. Only the user will have the access to their records and only they can allow to share that information with their doctors or pharmacies.

I have started using this, very easy to use, and they have so many features which will be helpful for us. The site allows patients to schedule appointments with doctors, refill prescriptions, receive diagnostic results online and do research on health topics.

Just like we have Quicken and Money for financing, we need such a service for Health so we can maintain complete records in one place.

Microsoft also recently introduced HealthVault but is not as comprehensive as Google Health.

It is a great start for Google Health. Now we can avoid confusions with doctors and hospitals and exchange data with doctors and pharmacies easily and store them for future reference.