Google gathers group of health care advisers

The council's formation raises speculation as to the company's future plans in Internet health.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. July 23/30, 2007.

Google, the Internet search giant, has convened a committee of health care leaders, in the company's words, to "help us better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development."

The move, announced June 27 on the company's blog (www.googleblog.blogspot.com) has fueled speculation that Google, which has advocated personal health records, is on the verge of developing and marketing its own PHR, among other health ventures. The company has not specified any specific plans for new products, nor a specific role for its advisory committee in developing them.

Still, there have been hints about a Google PHR since the company earlier this year publicly began endorsing the Continuity of Care Record standards for electronic and personal health records. Idaho-based health technology consultant Vince Kuraitis is one of many experts and health bloggers who see Google's health advisory council as the company's first step to a PHR that could dominate its market. He also is one of many who sees Google's health ventures having a dominant impact on the health system itself, given the company's size (No. 241 on the Fortune 500 and rising quickly), Web power (not just search engines, but numerous other Web-based software ventures) and cultural significance ("googling" has become a generic team for Internet searching).

"Google Health ... could be the event of the decade in advancing health care reform -- not just health care information technology ... reform, but health care system reform," Kuraitis wrote on his blog e-caremanagement.com/. "GH promises simultaneously to create AND dominate the market for next generation personal health records. There is nothing else in our solar system or in the entire universe like it."