Is There Anything Google Can’t Do?

Is it any surprise that Google would come up with a solution to medical record keeping before every government-funded agency?  I mean, what an embarrassment to the private sector insurers and the publicly funded health agencies!  In Canada alone, several initiatives are underway (as I write this) focused on a secure and reliable application where doctors can keep on-line profiles of patients including medical history, drug allergies, and issued prescriptions.  The card providers are even trying to develop a solution.  Then, out of the blue, from nowhere, an Internet search company beats everyone to it.

I guess we should not be surprised.  For years now government agencies and health providers have been stumbling over this concept.  It wasn’t the concept – everybody agrees that it would be a useful tool.  Rather, it was the people involved.  With so many varying interests, bureaucratic levels for approval, and decision makers, it is no wonder why it has taken them so long to come up with a solution.  Like everything else, it took an outsider to jump in and say “Hey guys, shut up for a minute and listen…here is how you do it.”.

I think that the announcement today by Google is a wake-up call to our industry as a whole, whether they be practitioners, healthcare associations, government agencies, or insurers.  The old-ways of doing things are quickly being replaced by new and more efficient manners of operating.  The wake-up call is that we need to start thinking like an outsider looking into our industry and stop making policies and strategies based on how it has always been done or how the industry perceives the current benchmark of the industry.  Otherwise, we will start to see more and more “industry outsiders” one-upping the leaders in our field.

I can already here the comments from the leaders of our industry…”This is terrible, what about privacy?  This cannot be allowed!”.  And I do agree to some point.  The third-party services being offered by Google are an issue because they are not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) in the US.  Passed in 1996, HIPPA established strict standards that classify medical information as a privileged communication between a doctor and patient. So sure, there are rules in place to protect this information and Google is not bound by them.  Just get over this issue for a moment and ask yourself – Is it better to reject Google’s accomplishement because of privacy issues or celebrate the fact a technical solution we have all been waiting for is here and ready to be used?  We could not do it, and Google did.  I think as an industry, we need to embrace it and find a way to take the breakthrough technology and apply it in a manner that is sensible and not try to re-invent the wheel.  If we keep doing this, we will continue to get further and further behind other industries and be subject to more embarrassments like today’s announcement.