Your Electronic Health Profile on Google

Big news this week from Google. It’s latest service, Google Health, is now open to the public. It’s a free, opt-in addition to your existing Google account that lets you store your personal health information — conditions, medications, allergies, procedures, test results, immunizations, and so on. Google Health is also partnered with a small handful of “health information providers” like iHealthRecord, clinics and pharmacy chains like Walgreens and CVS from which the system can import your information. The idea here is to help you aggregate and store all of your medical data in one central profile so that it’s easier to maintain and, more importantly, easier to send to your health care providers when needed.

Obviously there is a need for this sort of thing (when was the last time you thought it was easy to gather your records?), and there is certainly a market. Google is jumping into the pool with hospitals, a vast number of insurance companies and several independent services that have been in the personal health record game for some time. WebMd has built it’s entire business around this very idea and I’d expect many more to follow. But unlike the rest of their free services, Google isn’t displaying ads within Google Health. It’s not clear yet if that will change in the future, but I suspect it will.

There’s a lot of tinfoil-hat buzz surrounding Google Health, citing concerns about putting such sensitive information in the hands of a corporation and further fueling a paranoia that Google is becoming a one-stop citizen information store for the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the Terms of Service statement doesn’t do much to deflate those fears:

Google is not a “covered entity” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the regulations promulgated thereunder (”HIPAA”). As a result, HIPAA does not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any third party.

Google seems to be bound only by their own policies and integrity, and solemnly swear to only provide your records to entities you designate. I have more than my fair share of healthy paranoia, but still don’t see any real reason for concern. It’s naive to think that Google is the only entity with access to your personal data, or that any powers-that-be have to rely on Google in order to get it. If Big Brother wants to know when you had the flu, he’ll find out with or without Google. And for most of you he’ll just have to check your public MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter profiles because you will have told everyone everything anyway.

Google already helps you keep track of your email, calendar, documents, photos, videos, blog, stock portfolios, and news… and all under one login, one account. Isn’t this just the next logical step for them? If so, what’s next? Google Tax, or maybe Google DNA?