Google and Microsoft plan online health initiative

Link: Google and Microsoft plan online health initiative
Filed under: Google News, Microsoft News, Internet News

According to the New York Times, Google and Microsoft both have early-stage plans to enter the online health care market, with initiatives that could help people make better choices about their health care.

The New York Time article included screen images of Google’s prototype web pages for the proposed service.

A message on Google’s prototype welcome page reads, “At Google, we feel patients should be in charge of their health information, and they should be able to grant their healthcare providers, family members, or whomever they choose, access to this information. Google Health was developed to meet this need.”

The pages are personalised to suit an individual user and include a health profile of medications, conditions and allergies; a health guide which suggests treatments, exercise regimes and possible drug interactions; information on local health facilities and reminders about health appointments or prescription renewals.

Google hasn’t commented on the prototype, other than to say that it plans to introduce online health products and experiment to see what people find useful.

The plans would benefit Google and Microsoft by providing a larger audience for health-related advertising and services.

However, the companies could run into problems with privacy issues and the large amount of policy and regulation that surrounds health information.

Microsoft will announce more details about its health plans this autumn, while Google has delayed its announcement until next year.