Just Call Microsoft and Google Our New Big Brothers

I’m not sure, but I think Microsoft and Google are taking over the world and here’s why.

In mid-June, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) 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.
• Decide who can access their health records.
• Review their claims and some medical records, which the insurer says helps patients manage their care and have more productive discussions with physicians.
• Link their medical records to pharmacies. When members get new prescriptions, they automatically will be added to the members’ records.
• Delete their records at any time.

The insurer will provide some information, but the total amount of information in the online medical records depends upon the use of them by physicians, according to the story.

On first impulse, this seems pretty cool.

Each person has one medical record—although it might not be complete. The record is available at any time and any place via the Internet, and this system would certainly result in using less paper. And those in favor of using Google Health say subscribers can check lab results as soon as they are posted. Wow—no calling the doctor’s office and waiting for someone to unearth the results and return the call.

But, as they say, there is no free lunch.

The idea of medical records floating around out there in cyberspace is a little scary.

I visited the site and it seems that there are additional “services” available—some of which I didn’t understand, but somehow I think they have to do with using the information.

As for security, BCBS says the program is impenetrable. Sure, we’ve heard that one before. We all know that there are super-geeks out there who can crash any security wall. And think about how gleeful pharmaceutical companies would be to get these records and build their mailing lists and construct their target maps.

What do you think about the idea of creating medical records on the Internet?

Good, bad or you don’t care?

What do you think?