Home Care Software Geek Probes Google’s Healthcare Intentions

Posts by Home Care Software Geek in this blog don't talk about Home Care Nursing Software, Private Duty Telephony, DME Delivery Software, Care Transitions or the other topics we focus on regularly at Ankota. Instead, these posts are intended to keep our readers up to date with technology trends that might be useful to your agencies, such as social media technologies, mobile devices, and what's happening with bigger companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple.

In 2008, Google launched “Google Health” around the same time that Microsoft launched Microsoft Health Vault.  The idea on the part of both companies was that they would provide a place in the cloud for people to store their personal health record.  Both companies shut down their initiatives and learned that there wasn’t widespread adoption of people storing their information.  Most of us just don’t store our health information in an electronic way or otherwise.  People keep trying (as evidenced by the Fitbits under Christmas trees last year), but for the broad population, this idea is still ahead of its time.

After the Google Health failure, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page commented that healthcare is a “painful business to be in.”  But that doesn’t mean that they’ve stopped trying.  Here's a recap:

• Google Fit is a mobile phone application for Android.  On my new Samsung Galaxy phone, there’s a sensor for me to take my pulse and I’m pretty sure that the app tracks my activity passively.  As you can tell, I don’t use the app yet, but it’s coming, and if it’s compelling then maybe I will.

• The Baseline Study is a Google initiative to study the molecular and genetic information of 175 people in order to construct a model of healthiness.  If nothing else, Google is a big data company, and can potentially play a future role in searching the “genetic internet” to diagnose and/or prevent disease.

• Google Glass is a futuristic yet real product that turns your glasses into a useful computer.  It can help you find things, give you walking directions, and much more.  There are studies at Beth Israel Deaconess hospital in Boston considering Google Glass for healthcare.

• The Calico Project was announced by Larry Page last year with a goal of accelerating learning about aging.

I have to admit that I’m a big Google fan.  I use Gmail, Google Maps, an android phone, their Chrome browser, and of course, the search engine...and I really appreciate having them.   I’m sure that someday they’ll have a great impact in healthcare.