Electronic HealthCare Record

I went to the Loyola CIO award event last week where Dr. John Halamka was the recipient. Dr. Halamka is the CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is well known in the national health care IT. In fact he is the Chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel and Co-chair of the HIT Standards Committee. He talked about some of the new technologies with healthcare, like eHR (Electronic Healthcare Record). Some of the vendors include Microsoft, Google, and IBM. So I decide to take a look at the eHR, of course Google is easy to find as usual as oppose to other vendors. Many people concern about the privacy of the eHR that needs to be addressed. I will just go over some of the features of Google Health so you will get a taste of what to expect if you decide to give it a try.
After you login to Google Health @ https://health.google.com (need a Google account), you will be asked to setup a profile about yourself that includes insurance, conditions, medications, allergies, procedures, test results, and immunizations. It also asks for your personal data, i.e. sex, race, blood type, weight, and height etc. You can also add/import your healthcare data (files and images) to your profile after setup. To address the security concerns, Google Health has notices service to either email or mail alerts to you if your information was breached by unauthorized access.
After you add medications into your profile, drug interactions will show any potential drug interactions that could be harmful for you. If you have a new prescription, it will tell you if you should take the prescription. Drug complications is a big problem in healthcare industry and such service will help to reduce the risks posed to the patients and reduce insurance cost for doctors because medical malpractice litigations will drop as a result of this service.
Explore medications and treatments show the available online services to you. You can link your profile to one or more of the web sites and get the services. One word of caution, if you link your profile to the service provider, you may consent them to see your medical records. One of the online provider is Cleveland Clinic MyConsult provides second opinions if you need. Of course, it depends on how comfortable you are to get medical service online.
Other services provided by Google Health include “Share this profile” to share your record to your family members and doctors. “See who has access” provides limited reports on who has what kind of access to your records. “Medical contacts” allow you to add contact information when medical notification is required. “Find a doctor” provides a tool to search a doctor that provides the service according to your profile.
Above is just a brief overview of Google Health. If you feel like it, you may want to investigate more on your own. Since this is linked to your Google account, I would advise to create a new Google account just for this purpose if you worry about security.