Google Health, a solution for a problem you didn't know you had. Why did Google launch Google Health in 2008 -- and shut it down this week? I picture folks there imagining in our health-conscious, self-care oriented Internet searchers, yearning for a place to park our personal records, and that the advertisers, knowing this, would ultimately layer in oodles of ads that related specifically our growing health self-management needs and wants. Sorting and organizing our personal health (or elder care) information on an online website -- it sounds like a good idea. From the Times article in 2008: "The companies all hope to capitalize eventually on the trend of increasingly seeking health information online, and the potential of Internet tools to help consumers manage their own health care and medical spending." Well, they got the former quite right. With more than 60,000 sites to look for a name-that-diagnosis factoid, we are both desperately and patiently seeking health information (sadly not necessarily correlating with our improved health). But unless our insurance companies mandated and incented us to enter data online -- or our post-clipboard era doctors required it, do we really want to put our med lists (or any other personal information lists) on advertising-sponsored sites (including WebMD)? If our credit card files can be hacked and siphoned away, even just thinking our health information (or that our aging parents) is out there, reusable, intentionally or not, should give vendors pause -- and so it did -- bye bye, Google Health.
HORSHAM, Pa. – Verilogue, a company dedicated to improving healthcare communications, today announced the launch of CareCoach.com, a unique service designed to enhance communication between patients, caregivers and healthcare providers and improve healthcare outcomes by measuring and supporting shared decision-making.
Study: Maintaining social relationships and mobility in old age are so important for general well-being that some will go to extreme lengths to keep active.
Watson: that Jeopardy win was a good beginning -- real win is ahead. In a computer science building at Carnegie Mellon University last week, it was cute to watch the students file into a room to watch the last Jeopardy round on TV. So by now you know that IBM's super computerized multi-year Jeopardy effort paid off and Watson handily beat the two best human Jeopardy players. So what's Watson's next act? Soon, say IBM folk, Watson's tech will be commercialized within healthcare apps: "We're going to look at creating a product offering in the next 24 months that will help empower doctors to do higher quality decision making and diagnoses." Interesting -- and even more so while thinking about Andy Kessler's WSJ analysis of the types of jobs threatened by technology, including the roles of today's doctors.
