Archive for the ‘HIMSS’ Category

More on Google’s Partnership with Cleveland Clinic

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

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.

Posted in Cleveland Clinic, Google, HIMSS, Health Vault, Microsoft | No Comments »

Google and Cleveland Clinic Join Forces to Organize Your Health

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

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.

Posted in Google, HIMSS, health information | 4 Comments »

Live from Orlando: HIMSS 2008!

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

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.

Posted in HIMSS, Marketing, healthcare, unusual signs | 1 Comment »