Google, Google Everywhere

I’m not sure, but I think Google ise taking over the world.

In mid-June, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts announced that it will be the first insurer to participate in Google Health, an online personal health record service. It is offering this service to its three million members for nothing. Nada. Zip. And for that price, here’s what Google says the BCBS members can do, according to an Associated Press story in the Boston Herald:
• They can decide whether to open accounts or not; it is optional.
• They can decide who can access their health records.
• They can review their claims and some medical records, which the insurer says will help patients manage their care and have more productive discussions with physicians.
• They can link their medical records to certain pharmacies so that when they get new prescriptions, these will automatically be added to their records.
• They can delete their records at any time.

The insurer provides some information (I’m not exactly sure what this means), but the sum of the information depends upon the use of electronic health records by a physician, according to the story.

On first impulse, this seems pretty cool.

Each person could have one medical record—although it might not be complete—and the record would be available at any time and any place via the Internet. This would certainly save paper. And proponents of using Google Health tell me that participants will be able to check their lab results as soon as they are posted. No calls to the doctor’s office; no waiting while the staff unearths the results and returns your calls.

On the other hand, the idea of my medical record floating out there in cyberspace is a little scary.

I went to the Google Health site and it seems that there are additional “services,” not all of which I understand. And although everyone promises security, we all know there are super-geeks in the world who can crash any security wall. I shudder to think about how gleeful pharmaceutical companies would be to access my record or yours. Think of the mailing list they could amass to sell their products.

And do we really want the insurance companies to have such potential access to our records?

What do you think?

Is creating medical records on the Internet a good thing?

What concerns do you have?

How could it make our lives better or worse?