It has just been brought to my attention that Google have released Google Health. This is a place where you can upload all of your medical and personal data for reasons I do not understand.
Having the personal details of a significant number of people on the planet would mean that Google has more health information than most governments would have. They can therefore target you for advertisements for drugs (which is not allowed in Ireland, so I don’t know how that might work).
Who is going to have access to this information? I logged on but saw no mention of what would happen to this information and I would have expected an up-front statement about who would have access to it.
Would a drug company, for instance, pay for an analysis of trends such as in what areas of the country was diabetes going up and in which areas was diabetes going down? Would they pay for the research on the likely future market for product X, Y or Z?
What do you think?
What about security concerns? If Google Health is hacked in some way, what happens then? Is the data anonymised?
I doubt it, but I dont know.
On their Faq page, they side-step the question of how they are going to make money from this product:
6. If it’s free, how does Google make money off Google Health?
Much like other Google products we offer, Google Health is free to anyone who uses it. There are no ads in Google Health. Our primary focus is providing a good user experience and meeting our users’ needs.
So, there are no ads, yet they still provide the service…..
Be very wary of this one folks.
1 user commented in " Beware Google Health!!! "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackA lot of people is focusing in the fact that Google Health doesnt complains with the HIPAA. The problem is not about HIPAA or not HIPAA. The problem is centralizing the medical information of millions of patients in a database. Do you know how much value has that database?
When you have a very valuable thing you need more and more efforts to protect the thing. But there is no 100% secure system.
As a family doctor I am really concerned about the privacy threats of the Personal Health Records.
I lead a PHR project: http://www.keyose.com/
It is the first totally anonymous personal health record. No name, no email or other identification data required.
By providing a anonymous database we solve the privacy equation: not by rising the security costs but decreasing the potential value of our database for non-authorized intruders.
You may take a look…
“Confessors will not ask your name. Why do we?”