Google Health is participating in a pilot program to let Medicare beneficiaries in Arizona and Utah import their Medicare claims data into Google Health, the search giant's medical record-storing solution. Google is working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the project, which is supposedly the first of many CMS programs that will test how the government can give beneficiaries access to their medical data online.
Google
has announced that it will be working with the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services on a pilot program that will let Medicare beneficiaries in Arizona
and Utah import their claims data
into Google Health.
Google recently enabled
users
of Google Health to share their medical records and other personal health
information with trusted contacts, in a move that will allow the solution
to become more robust in its competition against Microsoft and
health-care-specific Websites such as WebMD.
"The pilot is one of several CMS
programs to test out how the government can give beneficiaries secure access to
their medical data online," Missy Krasner, product marketing manager for
Google Health, wrote on the corporate blog. "Before I came to Google, I
worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which houses CMS.
At the time, the idea of giving beneficiaries access to their own Medicare
claims data in electronic format was just that-an idea. Today, it's becoming a
reality."
The U.S.
government plans to devote more than $19 billion of the stimulus package to health
IT-related projects.
Given that privacy has been a perennial concern for Google,
most
recently with regard to its new interest-based advertising, Krasner was
quick to point out that Google Health, which does not post ads, is also
preventing Medicare beneficiaries' information from becoming totally
transparent.
"For beneficiaries who choose to participate, it's important to know
that Medicare does not have access to information in your Google Health
Account-Medicare will only be sending data to your Account," Krasner
wrote. "Beneficiaries who participate in the pilot will still have access
to data imported into their Google Health Accounts after the pilot concludes at
the end of 2009."
Google Health will be one of four PHRs (personal health records) that the
participants in the Medicare Arizona and Utah
pilot can choose from. One of the goals of the pilot, apparently, is also to
give those beneficiaries choice in the tools they use to manage online medical
records.
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