Google Health opens, sparks privacy woes

After a year and half of development, Google's online filing cabinet for personal medical records is open to the public, giving users instant electronic access to their health histories, while reigniting privacy concerns.

Called Google Health, the service lets users link information from a handful of pharmacies and care providers, with plans to add many more. The Internet search giant is the latest entrant in the growing field of companies offering personal health records on the Web. Their ranks range from longtime online health services such as WebMD to the software powerhouse Microsoft to start-ups such as Revolution Health.

The companies all hope to capitalize on the trend of consumers increasingly seeking health information online, and the potential of Internet tools to help them manage their own health care and medical spending.

Google enters the field of personal health records with a leading online brand, deep pockets and a wealth of technical skills. In a two-month trial this year, the Cleveland Clinic found that its patients were eager to use the Google health records. Google Health differentiates itself from the pack through its user interface and features such as the public availability of its application program interface, or API, said Marissa Mayer, the Google executive overseeing the service.

More than two dozen companies and institutions announced that they are partners with Google Health, including Walgreens, CVS, the American Heart Association, Quest Diagnostics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic.

Mary Adams, 45, a Cleveland Clinic patient who participated in the Google Health pilot, said that she was initially concerned about the privacy of her medical information. Still, she felt safe enough to enroll and has been using the service for six months, linking it with an online health management tool from the Cleveland Clinic and adding information on prescriptions and doctors to her online profile.

The service, still a non-final ''beta'' version, does not include ads. Besides importing records from providers, users can enhance their password-protected profiles with details such as allergies and medications, they can search for doctors and they can locate Web-based health-related tools. The health venture provides fodder for privacy watchdogs who believe Google already has access to too much about the interests and habits of its users in its logs of search requests and its vaults of e-mail archives.

Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said services such as Google Health are troublesome because they aren't covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Passed in 1996, HIPAA set strict standards for the security of medical records.

By transferring records to an external service, patients could unwittingly make it easier for the government, a legal adversary or a marketing concern to obtain private information, Dixon said. During a webcast earlier this week, Mayer said users' health information is stored at Google's ''highest level of security.'' Mayer said in an interview with The Associated Press that users' health information will not show up in search results.

Utah company is participating: A Utah company is one of 14 businesses and organizations that are part of the offerings of Google Health. MediConnect Global of South Jordan offers to retrieve medical records for Google Health users and to identify information from them to be placed in their profiles.

MediConnect will digitize the records from health care providers identified by customers. Customers will be able to access their records online or download them to their own computers. "MediConnect's medical record retrieval service allows people to have access to information from their personal health history from anywhere in the world at anytime," said Amy Rees Anderson, company CEO. The company charges a fee of $98 for up to 100 pages and 10 cents per page for additional records, said Cory Maloy, director of communications. The company complies with the federal health privacy law, he said.



View Original article.

INDUSTRY LEADERS FORM TASK FORCE TO ALIGN ON ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD STANDARDS

May 1, 2008 - Focused on the acceleration of electronic health records, industry leaders from Canada Health Infoway (Infoway), Canadian Healthcare Information Technology Trade Association (CHITTA, the Health Division of Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC)), and the Association of Health Technology Industry (AITS) announced today they have formed a task force to accelerate and promote the transition to a new set of pan-Canadian health information technology standards.

The task force will collaboratively work to promote the adoption of pan-Canadian standards, especially with point of service systems, by engaging clinicians, health care providers and vendors. Involving these stakeholders will support the planning required to ensure the interoperable electronic health record (iEHR) is leveraged and the adoption of pan-Canadian standards is accelerated.

"Time and again, we have seen the success of industries like the financial and consumer sectors drive faster end-user adoption through the implementation of standards," said Dennis Giokas, Chief Technology Officer, Canada Health Infoway. "With the aligned direction of our industry partners we can now work collaboratively to accelerate the deployment and use of these interoperability standards for the benefit of Canadians and the Canadian health care system."

Common standards are an integral element of, and a key requirement for, the establishment of a pan-Canadian interoperable electronic health record. Significant cost savings and quality improvements are achieved when custom integration is eliminated. Patients, clinicians and health service delivery organizations all benefit when data can be reliably shared across health care systems.

"We have been building health care systems using industry standards for over 20 years. Achieving full adoption of the pan-Canadian standards, and realizing the benefit of Canada's health infrastructure investments, is a multi-year journey until new products emerge and legacy systems are retired," said Brendan Seaton, President, CHITTA, the Health Division of Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC).

"Health information systems tend to be stable, so we will see a period where both existing and new standards are supported. We look forward to collaborating with health providers and Canada Health Infoway on developing solutions for this transition."

To enable the successful deployment of interoperable electronic health record solutions, the organizations support the use of: HL7 and DICOM for messaging, LOINC® and SNOMED CT® for terminologies, HL7's Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) for documents, HL7's Clinical Context Object Workgroup (CCOW) specification for clinical context management, as well as the pan-Canadian interoperability profiles.

"The transition to common, pan-Canadian standards allows us to achieve the highest quality in an interoperable electronic health record system. As an industry we are starting to see market demand for these new standards, and our members are making commitments to meet that demand. Success will come when we work together on this very complex challenge," said Daniel Laplante, Executive Director, AITS. Canada is a strong contributor to the global acceleration of EHR standards through its unique collaboration model.

Launched in 2006, the Standards Collaborative provides coordination, implementation, support, education, conformance and maintenance of electronic health record standards in Canada. One third of its members are representatives from health information technology companies.

Read Original Article.

About Infoway
Infoway is an independent, not-for-profit organization funded by the Federal government. Infoway jointly invests with every province and territory to accelerate the development and adoption of electronic health record projects in Canada. Fully respecting patient confidentiality, these secure systems will provide clinicians and patients with the information they need to better support safe care decisions and manage their own health. Accessing this vital information quickly will help foster a more modern and sustainable health care system for all Canadians.

About CHITTA
CHITTA, the Canadian Health Information Technology Trade Association, is the Health Division of ITAC, the Information Technology Association of Canada. CHITTA represents more than 120 companies across Canada that provide information and communications technology (ICT) products and services to the health sector. CHITTA represents the Industry to governments and health care decision-makers for the purposes of building a strong and sustainable health ICT industry in Canada, promoting investment in health ICT, and ensuring the interoperability of health ICT systems.

About AITS
Created in 1987 and representing over 100 members, the Association of health technologies industry's (AITS) mission is to stimulate the development of the health technologies industry and to promote its economic and social value. AITS is a meeting place for exchanges between partners on domestic and foreign markets.

U.S. Poll: Most Adults Say EHR Benefits Outweigh Privacy Risks

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults believe that the benefits of electronic health records outweigh the privacy risks, according to a new Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive poll, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Three-quarters of the survey's 2,153 respondents said they agree that patients would receive better care if doctors and researchers were able to share information more easily through electronic systems. Similarly, 63% said that using EHRs could reduce medical errors, and 55% said EHR sharing could reduce health care costs. However, about 25% of respondents said they are unsure if EHRs can provide these benefits.

The survey, which was conducted between Nov. 12 and 14, also found that about 25% of respondents said they currently use some form of EHR. Of those, 23% said the EHR is maintained by their physician, while 2% said they created and maintain their own personal health record on their computer. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they do not have an EHR, while 17% said they are unsure if they have an EHR.

The poll indicates that privacy concerns still remain among health care consumers. Half of those surveyed said EHRs make patient privacy more difficult to ensure, down from 61% in 2006. Twenty-five percent of those surveyed said EHRs would not make it more difficult to ensure patients' privacy, while another 25% said they were unsure.

November 29, 2007 from iHealthbeat

New Brunswick | Tenders awarded for key components to e-health strategy

September 7, 2007, FREDERICTON (CNB) - Contracts have been signed for four major pieces in the province's e-health strategy, Health Minister Mike Murphy announced today. The systems are an Interoperable Electronic Health Record, a Client Registry, a Provider Registry and a Provincial Diagnostic Imaging Repository.

"These systems are key building blocks along the journey to a complete electronic health record that will ultimately link all patient information from across the health care system - from hospitals, from your family doctor, from your local pharmacy and elsewhere," Murphy said. "With this information, authorized health care providers will have access to individuals' health records to provide them with the care they need, when they need it."

"The progress we are celebrating today on the e-health front is a major step forward in the modernization of New Brunswick's health care system," said Richard Alvarez, president and CEO of Canada Health Infoway. "Information is central to quality health care. Today's announcement is about making that vital information quickly accessible to clinicians so they can get on with the job of caring for their patients."

The Interoperable Electronic Health Record is considered a foundational piece for the One Patient One Record (OPOR) system. It will provide the infrastructure and functionality required to link, capture, store and view relevant patient information.

The Client Registry system is essentially the one-patient component of the OPOR system. With this system, each patient will have a unique provincial identifier that will tie together patient information from various clinical systems.

The Provider Registry system will contain information on health care providers in the province.

The Provincial Diagnostic Imaging Repository will consolidate a patient's diagnostic imaging reports and images for procedures such as X-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds and MRIs, into a provincial repository. Once completed, the diagnostic imaging information will be retained for the life of a patient, will be available provincewide in a standardized format for the use of authorized clinicians, and will be stored in a centralized system with appropriate back-up.

Murphy said that the Department of Health has signed agreements with Initiate Systems Inc. for their Client Registry solution ($1.9 million over two years) and Orion Health for the Interoperable Electronic Health Record and Provider Registry systems ($4 million over three years). A third contract awarded to xwave for system integration and maintenance services is worth $5.6 million over three years. The contract to create a Diagnostic Imaging Repository has been awarded to Agfa Healthcare Inc., in the amount of $9 million over two years.

"What we are witnessing now is a new era unfolding for health care in our province," Murphy said. "The implementation of the OPOR system will revitalize our health system by improving access to vital clinical information which will aid in better clinical decision-making, and result in improved care for New Brunswickers."

The OPOR system will be implemented over a three-year period at a total cost of $35.9 million. New Brunswick has partnered with Canada Health Infoway, which is contributing $18.2 million to the project, with the remaining $17.7 million coming from the province. In total, it is estimated that New Brunswick needs to invest a quarter of a billion dollars over the next decade in electronic information and computer technology to improve the delivery and management of health care in the province.

About Canada Health Infoway (Infoway)
Canada Health Infoway is a federally funded, not-for-profit organization created to facilitate the development of electronic health information systems across the country. It works with provinces and territories to invest in electronic health projects, which support safer, more efficient health care delivery. These private and secure systems fully respect patient confidentiality, and provide health care professionals with immediate access to complete and accurate patient information, enabling better decisions about diagnosis and treatment. The result is a sustainable health care system offering improved quality, accessibility, productivity and cost savings.

View the original post by Canada Health InfoWay.