Google Unveils Online Health Record Pilot Program - The HIPAA in the Room
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Any plan with that much upside potential comes with some significant issues. This one is no exception. There are several elephants in the room that Google would rather not talk much about - and one of them is a hippo.
Well, more precisely, it's HIPAA. That abbreviation stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This twelve-year-old legislation establishes strict rules that pertain to communication between a doctor and a patient; pharmacists and pharmacy technicians must follow these rules as well when filling prescriptions. The act gives the doctor-patient relationship a certain privileged status. For example, when a doctor is subpoenaed for a patient's medical record, the doctor must inform the patient.
What happens to those records when a patient agrees to store them with an external health service, such as the one started by Google? It would appear that Google is not covered by HIPAA. That might make it easier for anyone - a government agency, a lawyer with a suit against the patient, perhaps even an employer - to get their hands on the records. What would Google do if it receives a subpoena - or even a simple request from a legal authority - for a client's medical records?
There are other potential issues with Google storing medical records online. The most obvious, of course, revolve around security, privacy, and hacking. What could a malicious person with access to other people's medical records do? Dealing in prescription drugs comes to mind; so does identity theft and blackmail. It's not a pretty picture.
Then there's the issue of what Google itself might do with the records. Google is a search engine, but it's also an advertising agency; indeed, ads provide its bread-and-butter revenue. While the company has promised that it will not sell ads to support its new health records service, it's difficult to believe this; after all, Google has a long history of starting a service without ads, and then putting ads on it later (Gmail is the first example to come to mind, but there are others). Google insists that it will profit by building traffic to its site, which is the same model it uses for Google News.
The only real surprise is that the negatives to storing health records online haven't come up sooner. Microsoft has its own competing service, called HeathVault, and AOL boasts Revolution Health. Microsoft's service has been around since late last year, and AOL's service has been around even longer. Why wait until now for the storm of controversy?
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