Google discontinues health product
Google has retired Google Health (launched 2008), announcing on its blog that it “is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would.”
Google health designed as free personal health record service
The information was provided voluntarily by users and included health conditions, allergies, medical results and medications. The information was used by Google to provide a merged health record as well as detailing potential interactions between drug, conditions and allergies.
The product is set to be discontinued on January 1 2012, giving users plenty of time to download any information stored in the service.
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On The Official Google Blog, Senior Product Manager, Aaron Brown, posted:
“When we launched Google Health, our goal was to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information. We wanted to translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users.
Now, with a few years of experience, we’ve observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people. That’s why we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue the Google Health service. We’ll continue to operate the Google Health site as usual through January 1, 2012, and we’ll provide an ongoing way for people to download their health data for an additional year beyond that, through January 1, 2013. Any data that remains in Google Health after that point will be permanently deleted.”
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Despite Google’s announcment, its competitor, Microsoft’s HealthVault, is still going strong according to a blog post on Sunday by Chief Architect for Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group, Sean Nolan. “What does this mean for HealthVault? The ‘buzz’ online ranges wildly, but the real and simple answer is: nothing.”
Source Hospitaleurope.com
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