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Google is one step closer to organizing the world’s information. It has announced in the Wall Street Journal this week that it will begin to allow people to put their health records on the web. Actually within Google, which really isn’t the web. On the web would probably be a little too broad since that usually means it can be searched for and viewed by everyone. Google is developing a new health record initiative that will allow people to upload and manage their health information on the Google platform. I refer to it as a platform and not a web site, because Google technically is not a web site. More on that below. Google much like Microsoft, and its HealthVault program, are entrenching themselves more and more into our lives. They are no longer just search engines indexing sites; they are becoming huge depositories of information that will eventually know more about you and friends and family than you do. This is not a bad thing, and you shouldn’t complain about it because you agreed to it when you signed up for your Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! account. You gave up your “privacy” when you clicked on the terms of service agreement checkbox. I find it interesting when people complain about privacy on the Internet. The Internet is a public space that is completely voluntary; nobody makes you put your information out there. Actually, nobody makes you go online and search for stuff or read email, so the arguments about privacy are weak. It is a risk you take when you venture into a public forum.

A Google Spokesman in the WSJ stated that:

“For us trust between Google and our users is one of the absolute cornerstones of our business. And we are absolutely committed to continuing that dedication in all of our efforts.”

Can your credit card company say that?

A fact that some have realized but most have not is that the Internet is not just about web sites. People use the Internet for almost everything, a lot of it no longer focused on someone going to a web site and reading about an organization and its products. It is about interacting with others, forming communities and organizing our crazy lives. The most popular sites are not ExxonMobil, GE, Coke and other very large organizations. They are sites such as Reddit, Zulu, Furl, Digg, FaceBook, YouTube, Ebay, LinkedIn, Google and other sites that are interactive and form community. Google has been more than a search engine for quite some time it offers Gmail, office applications, video, blogging services, instant messaging, photos… The idea of providing health records is just a logical step in its progression of filling its corporate mission of gathering the information of the world. You are in the world, and your health record is information…

Hospitals and other health organizations need to take off their 1999 hat, and realize that people really don’t care about your facility or no smoking policy. People want to take control of their health and the way they are treated when they interact with a hospital. This will be done through hospital sites becoming more interactive and community focused through video, blogs, forums, and hospitals working with organizations such as Google, Revolution Health and Microsoft in creating portable electronic health records. Hospitals talk about being patient centric, here is one more way to do that.

Cleveland Clinic seems to have figured it out, we wrote about it earlier this week…

• Google and Cleveland Clinic Join Forces to Organize Your Health
• More on Google’s Partnership with Cleveland Clinic

I was in the midst of the great towers of GE, Cerner, Microsoft, and the other glittering HIMSS palaces and there was one player out of place: Google.

It had such a modest footprint and has been so quiet about the partnership with Cleveland Clinic, you’d never know they launched a major initiative. There were no banners advertising Google was even at the show, nevermind they were entering the PHR space.

But I can tell you one thing: from my unofficial poll, PHR vendors seemed a lot more concerned about Google than they did about Microsoft’s Health Vault. (”Health Vault is just a place to store stuff,” is what was more or less repeated back to me — which is more or less the official party line.)

In show full of massive overstatement — I know of several companies in the financial dumps who made significant booth investments — Google’s presence was, for a soon-to-be major player, oddly understated.

Last week Google and Cleveland Clinic announced that they will be working together to give patients better access and flexibility to their health records. What an idea! People “in charge of their own health information.” Wow! Why did Google have to revolutionize this? Aren’t they just a search engine? Yes, they are a search engine, but they are quickly turning into the largest collection of all things on the web, and now not on the web. For instance, Google has worked with universities for the past couple of years to digitize entire libraries, and now they are digitizing health records.

Here is Google’s mission: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

See more than a search engine. Google will continue to organize data yours and mine until they either run out of server space or things to index. This will be interesting to watch.

And this is why it is exciting:

By integrating with the Google platform, Cleveland Clinic is helping create national access to electronic medical records at no cost to the user or provider. The integration between the two systems will help deliver:

• National Access — A more efficient and effective healthcare system driven by a working interoperability model that moves electronic medical records from a closed model to one that is open and connected.
• Consumer Empowerment — A secure patient-centric, consumer-driven tool that will provide each consumer increased control of their medical care, without compromising their privacy. This will empower patients to actively manage their overall health.
• 24/7 Access/Portability — A web portal with 24/7 access, capable of providing the consumer with an opportunity to actively engage in their health care, heightening the importance of quality care and service by providers.

You can see the press release on the Cleveland Clinic web site.

Update:

The Health Care Blog has posted a great post on the Google and Cleveland Clinic discussion.

I am NOT saying that there shouldn’t be privacy protections and there is no reason in my mind why, for all HIPAA’s flaws, it cannot be extended to PHR providers as covered entities.

However, as far as I can tell nothing that is happening here violates HIPAA. Showing you keyword based advertising may not to everyone’s taste, but it does not mean your private health data is being transferred to anyone. And presumably your data will only end up in these services if you give them permission to accept it, which will include consent to provide whatever services and advertising you’ll see.

I’ll begin by stating that while tradeshows may be necessary, they’re not at the top of my list of things to do with my time.  Nonetheless, since it’s snowing at our Boston office and my next trip to our Houston location is a few weeks away, I am grateful for the sunshine.

What I am surprised by is A) that the show has grown so (relatively speaking) lavish — see GE’s small city for more on that and B) the marketing, despite the truly exceptional tradeshow booths, is downright corny.

Ok Paul, you might be saying.  Isn’t that true of all tradeshows?

Fair enough, but it’s weird to see the trappings of a consumer-focused show about IT.  Where else do you see puns made about EMRs?  It’s more glitz, same fundamental problems of communication.  I’m in the industry and I couldn’t dechiper what half of the vendors did without reading some literature.  It’s like a teen movie where the geek is remade in the image of the cool jock, but he still keeps his slide rule in his locker.  (Snort, snort.)

To wit, I’ll post a few photos of what I thought were the funniest booths, but let me sign off with a description of the one which I vote as most bizarre.

What you see when you approach the booth is a series of stuffed animals in cages.  The tag line is about user “adoption” and the dogs need a home.  Get it?  A pun on the word adoption.

The thing is… the booth looked like a puppy mill at the mall.  And since the puppies were stuffed, they appeared dead.

A friendly reminder that nothing kills faster than a marketing message that doesn’t live up to the promise.

Earlier this year, we spent a few days focused on our company (a rare event; we spend nearly all the rest of the year focused on our clients) and one thing we strongly felt we were good at was ensuring project timelines. On the face of it, timelines seem like project management issues, but they’re not. It’s actually a combination of a quality design process, easy-to-deploy technology, a dedicated team, and the ability to apply internal pressure as necessary within a healthcare organization. Complicated? It can be.

But I walked away from that meeting wondering how good.

We did a little math on our own projects and, it turns out, from start to launch, our average project takes 4.5 months.

It’s a number so low, I’ve been laughed at by potential clients who didn’t think it would work in their organization. (Note I used the term potential; we avoid poorly run hospitals as much as hospitals want to avoid a poorly run vendor.)

Someone had the very bright idea to go back over projects that went some way besides MedTouch — other healthcare web vendors, local firms, or internal resources — and call our contacts there to find out how it went. As part of our survey, we asked if they’d launched their site and how long it took.

The answer?

8 months was the best estimate; only one had actually launched. It took that client 8 months exactly.

In other words, clients who picked MedTouch reduced the time it took for the whole organization to deliver the project by 3.5 months.

I call that exceptional. And now we can show the math to prove it.

This webinar, taped on Valentine’s Day, is about how to find a vendor you’ll love. If you work in healthcare online marketing or e-health, this webinar will explain:

• What a good RFP process looks likeWho in your organization should be involved
• Why you don’t need to hire a consultant
• How to get the best quality of responses to your RFP

In one hour, you will come away with a complete understanding of what you can do to get vendor interested in working hard for you.

Learn about our upcoming webinars.

When you work helping hospitals and healthcare organizations deliver exceptional web presence online, you’d think that updating your own site would be a snap.

Oh, you’d be wrong.

Every time we start a new engagement, we caution our clients: the biggest reason your site will run late is because you will sign up for writing content that you don’t have time to write.

This thought came to me last week as I was editing copy after-hours.

While update our site little by little, once a year we overhaul it. This year’s site displays many things what we’ve learned over the last year. In addition to a more web contemporary look, it contains best practice search engine techniques, leverages a simple but compelling flash piece to engage the visitor, employs a pick down list for easy navigation, and takes advantage of ever larger screen sizes.

And despite all we’ve learned delivering sites for several dozen clients, there I was, up late worrying about proper semi-colon usage.

And that reminded me, as we mentioned in our recent webinar: content is still king.

Check out the new MedTouch.com site.

Wicked good times at MedTouch, we have birthed another potential award-winning web site with our client Rehabilitation Hospital of the Cape and Islands, a.k.a, www.rhci.org. Potential award-winning, you ask? Yes, potential because we have not entered it into any contests. Wait until next year!!

We worked closely with RHCI’s marketing and communications team to develop a best-in-class web presence for rehabilitation hospitals. People will be coming to the site just to see the ingenuity and creativity that was put into such an endeavor. People will be saying, “If their web site is this good, just imagine how great their services are!!” I know this may sound a bit odd, but an organization’s web site is a window into the brick and mortar version. If a hospital has a poor web site, it probably means that their internal workings are not much better. Bold, I know…

Check it out, and let us know your thoughts. We are always open to praise, as well as constructive criticism.

Shameless Press Release…