raving lunacy - oxymorons for the 21st century

Here is a peek at Google Health. . The same clean interface that is a hallmark of Google. The other thing is that this is not Microsoft Health Vault. That was the good news.

Here is the bad news. Using a Google account for accessing and keeping this information ’safe’. Google has consistently hammered individuality from their offerings and services. It doesn’t matter how many different services or toys you use that Google offers, they are all kept in the same bucket which is your Google Identity, which is your email or Gmail address.

Think about that for a moment. Google News, Alerts, Piccasa, Google office products, Gmail, and any other number of things, including any ads you click on, all go into the bucket with your name on it. Now Google does have a reputation for using computers to do the work, such as the algorithms for things like Page Rank, and serving ads on websites. So in one sense there is security in obscurity, just in the sheer volume of information. If you do not think that Google will not leverage this information, I have 300 miles of white sand beach here in Phoenix, Arizona that I will gladly sell you.
However, that obscurity will vaporize in a heartbeat, with a username and some password cracking software.

The funny thing about some health care information, is that it is not important. You get the clap, you take antibotics, and you move on. You may be embarrassed, but for the most part you will live. The unfunny part of health care information is the bits where you develop something serious. Currently this information is being used by Health Insurance Companies to deny claims or to cancel your ass. As long as there is not Universal Health Care, this information will eventually kill you.

Where Google Health is unclear and therefore incomplete is in the depth and completeness of health records. For example, a couple of years ago I had chest pains, which required a hospital stay and some tests. Had blood work, temp, respiration, heartbeat monitoring, which consumed a few hundred K of space. Had a Cardiac Stress test lasting about 30 mins, which consumed 40GB of harddrive space. The MRI sucked up over 100GB of space. Two tests which sucked up more harddrive space than most computers have. Is Google gonna store all that? Somebody has to, or your records are not going to be complete.

There are a lot of things that can be done with health records for improving health, but not as long as we allow private insurance companies to cherry pick patients, and then when something does happen, cancel us.