|
As the Internet takes hold in healthcare then healthcare will increasingly come under the same pressures that other industries have. It's a phenomenon known as leapfrogging, where commercial innovations overtake other considerations such as standards setting, to the point where the standards tend to be pushed by the innovations, rather than vice versa.
That's particularly true with the technologies of Web 2.0, which are very plastic in nature. It sometimes seems that all anyone has to do is think of a Web service they want to put together and it's there, up and running.
One example is Revolution Health, a new Web portal set up by America Online's founder Steve Case. It's already seen as one of the leading examples of how Web 2.0 technologies can put more power into the hands of the consumer when it comes to healthcare choice and delivery.
Now comes Web 2.0 heavyweight Google. It's no secret that Google wants to do more in healthcare, to open up its search capabilities to what it believes is a fast growing demand from people for greater sources of information about their health.
At a recent Markle Foundation event, Google's vice president Adam Bosworth outlined some of the things that Google is doing in healthcare such as Google Co-op, through which physicians as "passionate experts" can help their patients getter better results in their Google searches.
He also commented on broader health issues that he -- and presumably Google -- see as factors driving this consumer hunger for health information.
The lack of easily accessible, comprehensive medical records results in people being in more pain for longer than they should be. Some people are almost certainly dying unnecessarily. Add to this the fact that, in a vain attempt to catch up and to be “safe†in the absence of shared electronic information, a barrage of unnecessary, redundant and extremely expensive tests are run over and over. Some estimates of the inefficiency in the system put the waste at $1 trillion, or more than $5,000 per family. In other words, outside of the obvious moral implications, there's also major commercial potential for the likes of companies such as Google to exploit.
We are also beginning to see studies such as this, which show how physicians are starting to use Google for serious medical uses, such as diagnosis of various ailments.
And then of course there's industry behemoths of Web 1.0 vintage who have enormous ambitions in Web 2.0.
Microsoft's chief executive, in his keynote at the recent HIMSS conference in New Orleans, made this telling remark:
And as certainly people in this (healthcare) business well understand, part of what will be required in the future is to involve patients more in their own wellness and in their own healthcare, so will information technology permit that interaction to happen in a very I think interesting and compelling way. That's a not-so-subtle hint that Microsoft, which set up a corporate unit devoted to healthcare, expects to aggressively go after its share of this future, patient-led revolution.
It's not that the standards efforts now underway in the health industry, or the government efforts to try and help them along, don't matter. Healthcare is a conservative and rather slow-moving industry, and in many ways that's a good thing.
However, the Internet moves at its own, dramatically faster pace. With Web 2.0, the healthcare industry could soon find itself having to follow its lead.
By Brian Robinson, GHIT Contributing Writer
|
 |
|
There are currently no comments to display.
|
|
|
|
To post a comment you must be a registered user of GOVHEALTHIT.com and be logged in. Use one of the forms below to login or register for FREE to GOVHEALTHIT.com
|
|
|
|
