Google Health–your medical history for your eyes only?
Last week, Google announced that they are testing an online record health service with the help of the Cleveland Clinic. The Google Health service is designed to let patients use the Internet to share their medical histories and lab results with various health care providers and pharmacies. Google considers this a “logical extension” of their search engine, and this service will be protected by a password that’s also required to use Gmail and other Google personalized search tools.
While it would be convenient to access my health records online, I greatly value my privacy. And while I don’t (much) mind my e-mail being parsed by Google so that they can target me with ads, I would hate for them to use my health records to do the same, although I suppose that’s one way for me to stop getting Viagra spam. I also don’t like the idea of my e-mail, calendar, health records, and search information all being associated with each other, and only under the strength of one password. I could very easily see someone illegally accessing the Google Health database, and then posting all of this health information for anyone in the world to see.
Call me a Luddite, but I will stick with the conventional, although also not perfect, method of schlepping my paper-based medical history from doctor to doctor until a more secure online system is built.
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