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GHIT Notebook

May 25, 2007

Trying to work out what Google will be doing in health care has been an up-and-down game ever since the company announced a year ago its Google Co-Op platform that allows Web developers to create customized search engines.

Google isn't saying, exactly. Officials there have backed away from interviews on the subject and point interested parties to its company blog and to formal speeches they have made, so it's more a case of picking through mounds of straw to find the nuggets.

It's not an empty exercise, however. As an upcoming story in Government Health IT shows that, despite the rise of portals such as Revolution Health, most people get to online information about health care mainly through Web searches. Even doctors and other professionals are starting to use that method as their first avenue to finding information.

Better and more specific search engines exist for health searches, but the truth is that Google is likely to be the first and only service most consumers will use.

So note the latest presentation from Adam Bosworth, a Google vice president and its current guru on all things health related.

A speech he gave May 23 at the 2007 American Medical Association of Informatics conference laid out his (Google's?) vision for the future of health care, starting with the very-politically-correct premise that "consumers should own their own total personal health and wellness data" and ONLY those consumers -- not even their doctors -- should have control over how they are used.

Toward the end of that presentation, speaking about the very important issues of authentication and trust -- which everyone agrees have to be rock solid if health IT is to progress -- he said the following:

When it comes to authentication and trust, we at Google may be able to help. We face this issue every day. For example, people want to expose one of their Google calendars to some time management service or to Salesforce.com, but not all their calendars, let alone their e-mail, their personal Google Documents (spreadsheets, text documents and presentations) or their other personal data. Thus, giving up their user name and password to the service is totally inappropriate. And it is important that not only are access rights constrained, but that they can be revoked because the customer may end up losing trust in the individual or online service with whom the data is shared. To us, trust does not mean a national identity since as far as we can see this flies in the face of the very human need to compartmentalize and maintain privacy.

Naturally, Google has a suggested remedy, in the form of what it is calling Account Authentication Proxy for Web-Based Applications, also known as Auth/Sub.

Personally, I don't think people should look for any great Google Health announcement. Bosworth has already complained how complex the area is and how difficult it is to come up with any comprehensive solutions.

And why should it? It knows the gigantic role it is already playing in the evolution of the Web and, with Microsoft-type assurance and arrogance, is expecting to continue its dominance come what may.

In the case of health care, and in Google's view, all the problematic mountains are heading in its direction anyway.

By Brian Robinson, GHIT Contributing Writer

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