Google is going to conquer the world. It’s latest conquest is health care information. It’s attempting what the entire medical industry has so far failed to do — make medical records electronic, portable, and part of your very own personal health web site.

I suppose if anyone can do it, Google can.

Last week it launched Google Health. It’s still pretty fresh, and actually getting your medical records on it requires a herculean effort on your part (you have to actually get your records in an electronic form and upload or type them in.) Or you have to be fortunate enough to have your records stored on one of Google’s partners’ web sites. Unlikely.

Google is not obligated to follow federal privacy laws, but it assures the world that your records will remain private and accessible only to you and to those who have permission to access them.

It also has some interesting services that you can access through Google Health. One of the more interesting ones is the chance to get an electronic second opinion from the Cleveland Clinic — to the tune of $565. It also provides basic health care information on some medical conditions. That will probably grow over time. It has a “find a doctor” feature, but I’m not sure I’d trust it if I needed an oncologist.

The Health Care Blog has an excellent review of the site by Dr. Robert Wachter, who is on Google Health’s Advisory council. He offers an insider’s perspective and includes links to other reviews that are more critical. Best of all, he has some fascinating tidbits about Google and it’s people.

Take a look at the site it here, and then come back and tell us whether you’d use it and how you’d use it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 8:16 am and is filed under medical records, the web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.