Google+PHR

Description:
In 2008 Google released Google Health, a free service to all of its members to manage medical history, personal medical record and the treatments and prescriptions. Google Health's goal was to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information. Users could update their health information manually or have it uploaded by a partnered health company. The idea was to have health information conveniently stored electronically. Separate health records from all of a users doctors could be condensed to one system and conveniently accessed on the web at any time. In 2011 Google updated their blog announcing that Google Health would no longer be supported and would be closed down. The service will remain online until January 2012 so that users can download their information before it is permanently deleted. Google is also assisting its users if they would like to transfer their information to Microsoft's competing service HealthVault that offers many of the same features as Google Health.

Goal:
"When we launched Google Health, our goal was to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information. We wanted to translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users."

Google Health proposes to:
 * Organize your health information all in one place
 * Gather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies
 * Keep your doctors up to date about your health
 * Be more informed about important health issues

Applications:
Google Health was designed to be a universal PHR system to track and maintain you own personal health record. It allowed users to store records of current and pass medications, allergies, procedures, immunizations, conditions, and test results. The users can enter any of this information manually, or they can import their medical records from a list of Google Health integrated partners, such as hospitals or neighborhood pharmacies. Google Health was able to import medical and/or drug prescription information from the following partners:
 * [|Allscripts]
 * [|Anvita Health]
 * [|The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center]
 * [|Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts]
 * [|The Cleveland Clinic]
 * [|CVS Caremark]
 * [|Healthgrades]
 * [|Longs Drugs]
 * [|Medco Health Solutions]
 * [|Quest Diagnostics]
 * [|RxAmerica]
 * [|Walgreens].

Google Health Discontinued
On January 1, 2013, [|Google Health] has been permanently discontinued. The main goal of Google Health was to have a consumer-centered approach from other domains/websites to healthcare and have an impact on a day-to-day health experiences of millions of users. Unfortunately, Google Health has not made a major as there are few users that uses Google Health. Google Health came down to a decision to permanently end Google Health in the beginning of 2013. Citing poor adoption by consumers using Google Health, Google announced on June 24, 2011 that Google Health online service (with all the personal health record and related health wellness tools) will be end on January 1, 2013. Prior to the end of Google Health, users will still able to download their health data and other services. Any data left after Google Health was discontinued had been permanently lost.

"Now, with a few years of experience, we've observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven't found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people."

Web Resources:
http://www.google.com/health/p/ http://www.ahip.org/content/default.aspx?docid=18330 http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/ahima/bok1_027539.hcsp?dDocName=bok1_027539

Related Terminology:
PHR EMR

Citation & References:
http://www.google.com/health/html/about/profiles.html http://www.google.com/health http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/healthvault/google-health.aspx?WT.mc_id=M11071401&WT.ad=Text::GoogleConvert::GoogHealthLifeboat::HvGH::1401 [] []