Massachusetts Blues Team Up With Google on Records
Google Health, the Googleplex’s Web portal for medical records, has found its first health insurance partner: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
Members of the plan will be able to log on for access to health-care claims information and portions of medical records starting this fall, the Boston Globe reports.
Patients will be able to view their treatment details on-line based on the insurers’ records. Information in the records would come from doctors as well as laboratories and pharmacies. Other health-care history that doesn’t come from insurance claims records would have to be entered by patients’ doctors, however.
We’ll be interested to see how that goes. Doctors’ willingness to invest their time and technological savvy may limit the extent to which patients will have access to this other information, the Globe notes.
Privacy concerns loom large when electronic medical records are mentioned, but the Blues plan says the information will be secure and won’t be shared without consent. Patients can delete their record at any time.
Despite the unknowns, the insurer appears to be enthusiastic about the new partnership. Steven Fox, head of the project for the Blue Cross, told the Globe: “It will make the quality of your experience with the physician a little better. It will be portable. It could improve compliance with treatment protocols. Now, when you get blood work, you’ll have the ability to see the actual report.”
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There will likely be a landrush of agreements such as this between other healthcare plans/insurers and Google, even if the current state of Google’s PHR is not very good. Given Google’s excellent track record, the company will almost certainly rapidly make improvements and given the usual facility of “plugging into” Google’s open-source software by third party software developers, a lot of useful functions will materialize from the programming universe.
Dr. Eugene J. Ratner operated upon mrs j edward spike jr. in boston as described in the lancet p..106 (Jan. 14, 1978) as witnessed by mark altschule md of harvard, mrs spike’s personal physician. ratner cured mrs spike’s causalgia/reflex sympathetic dystrophy. if google and boston and anyone suffering from causalgia gave the matter a bit of thought, they would immediately obtain ratner’s us personnel file from john malone at 312-440-2500 x2878 and show up on ratner’s doorstep with over 100,000,000
dollars cash us. google is brain dead when it comes to significant science and art and so is boston for having seen the cause of idiopathic pain cured in Boston, Boston can’t defer to a greater mind.
ted kennedy may obtain my wife’s file(s). you can’t but he can.
Until hackers stop breaking into corporate databases and executives stop carrying people’s valuable information on their laptops (which they often lose/misplace), this is a TERRIBLE idea. To the average citizen, the risk outweighs the benefit but to the greedy folks at Microsoft and health insurers, the monetary benefit sure outweighs the privacy of the populace. Keep your hands off my records!!!
Microsoft’s product is the one I would be wary of simply because Microsoft is much more likely to allow advertising or to sell selected information from data collected to third parties as well as create alliances that reduce (i.e. make proprietary) the openness of the software used, so Microsoft can extract monetary value from the data. That is Microsoft’s strategy for all its products. Google on the other hand uses freely available software products and makes much of it available to outside developers to permit easy integration of software products developed elsewhere. Google’s business philosophy in many ways is the opposite of Microsoft’s to the benefit of users. Security is an issue only to the extent of human error such as the occasions when someone has lost or left unattended a laptop with unencrypted data on it. The techniques for making data and data transmission secure are well-established and essentially unbreakable. But the human error will always be there. But that is true of any information exchange or information format, including physical letters in mailboxes or paper files in hospitals or physicians offices. None of that data are secure.
I am very worried about maintaining the privacy of patient records. The corporate business world has been unable to keep financial and other records secure. Many of us have experienced identity theft, access to our financial records, etc, at the hands of corporate business. GUARANTEED PRIVACY OF MEDICAL RECORDS and information is essential to quality health care and a RIGHT. I do not believe for one second that Blue Cross and Google can protect private medical information. I am dismayed that Blue Cross of Massachusetts has so little respect for the patients they cover!
Shame on Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts!
Here’s a quote from the article ARE YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS AT RISK?
“In a spate of recent security lapses at hospitals, health insurers and the federal government, private information on hundreds of thousands of patients, ranging from Social Security numbers to fertility-treatment and cancer records, has been compromised.”
You can access the article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120941048217350433.html?mod=sphere_wd
Patients’ privacy will be compromised. Blue Cross clearly does not care about patients.
Where is my permission in all this to post my medical records anywhere that anyone but my doctor can see them? The concept of personal privacy in America is laughable. And….do I get to access that data to check for errors? I doubt it.
Great information provided by the article. From this records the patients will be able to view their health records and lab reports through online. This is very helpful for the people who are very busy in their daily schedule.
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