Recently Google and Microsoft have launched two internet based products for people to maintain their medical and health information on line. Both products are still 'beta' and are only USA based. Being internet based, your medical records are available anytime, anywhere.
Imagine that you are travelling abroad and have a medical emergency. By providing your login the local doctor can access your on-line medical record to help him/her provide the most appropriate assistance. Sound good? Google and Microsoft also provide links with health service providers to upload their medical records to your Google/Microsoft medical record web site. There are also 'value-added' services to find doctors, clinics and even connect some medical devices directly to the PC to upload the data to your medical record!
Links:
The Age: This Won't Hurt a Bit
Google Health
Microsoft HealthVault
Questions:
1. What are the security and privacy issues?
2. What are the marketing opportunities for health service and product providers?
3. Who makes money out of this and how?
9 comments:
Hugely innovative and challenging development in health "care". Wide open to security breaches (I guess) by hackers, insurance companies, employers, government officials and basically anyone with a vested interest in your health, it's so scary from that angle it may well paralyse you from fear alone! Of course Wallmart, and the health group who are helping to establish it, plus the service providers will make money. But it's brave and it's brilliant. Used correctly it has the potential to help vastly improve your own health management as well as assisting any diagnosing and treating medical specialists. It will need input from complementary practitioners to help complete the health profile and help avoid herb/drug interactions, and potential vitamin and supplement deficiencies/toxicities.
Q1. Medical information is very confidential as it provides personal and sensitive information. Once this information is available on the internet it can be miss used if reaches the wrong hands. Moreover, the internet's security system is not the most accurate and is under constant technology change. On the other hand, 100,000 people die each year as a result of a "human mistake", gathering all the medical information will help doc' providing an accurate treatment (ILA, www.ila.org.il, 2010).
Q2. This kind of service provides with great deal of marketing opportunity, as it can provide with direct medical profile of people, making it easier than ever to target your market and know their needs and want. E.g. Google can offer people to sell their profile to medical companies or insert relevant ads like it does these days, only targeting medical issues.
Q3. The first to make money out of this is Google and Microsoft, as they provide with the service and they hold the information. It will be medical and insurance companies that will pay for ads, for info and more. It also provides an important data base for medical research which could benefit drags companies.
Efart Moses
Q1. It is a great idea to allow internet to transmit medical information at the point of care, but it might violate patient confidentiality, the patient should determines the provider identification on the medical information content who agree with the doctor which is worth risking for the benefit of making it available when needed.
Patients have an ethical and legal right to the confidentiality of their medical record, therefor, it need to be set a level of requirments for access which need when emergency.
Finally, there should be a legal regulation on the protection on breaches of confidentiality.
Q2. There are a huge marketing opportunities for insurance and and health companies on this issues, those organization may wish to have link to the provider as they will provide the patient information to them when they are permited, when the patient need to do a body check they can check the nearest clinic who link to the provider and there is the future transactions.
Q3. Every participants are making money out of this as the google and microsoft will earn commision or bonus on the percentage of the success transaction on the health provider from the users as they act as a 'agency' to link the patient and the organization. While the organization surely make money on this though the patient transaction.
Q1. It is a great idea to allow internet to transmit medical information at the point of care, but it might violate patient confidentiality, the patient should determines the provider identification on the medical information content who agree with the doctor which is worth risking for the benefit of making it available when needed.
Patients have an ethical and legal right to the confidentiality of their medical record, therefor, it need to be set a level of requirments for access which need when emergency.
Finally, there should be a legal regulation on the protection on breaches of confidentiality.
Q2. There are a huge marketing opportunities for insurance and and health companies on this issues, those organization may wish to have link to the provider as they will provide the patient information to them when they are permited, when the patient need to do a body check they can check the nearest clinic who link to the provider and there is the future transactions.
Q3. Every participants are making money out of this as the google and microsoft will earn commision or bonus on the percentage of the success transaction on the health provider from the users as they act as a 'agency' to link the patient and the organization. While the organization surely make money on this though the patient transaction.
q1. People's medical information is very confidential. It's very difficult to ensure that their historical medical information will be kept in security forever on the internet. There will be some hackers or fraudsters who lure them and easily get their information to make benefits or use in the wrong way.
q2. Health service and product providers may get more sponcors or advertising incomes for their websites. They can use their websites as public relations to promote their image, which is responable and oriented to society. This can be another IMC tools of them to sustain their enterprised value.
q3. Google, Microsoft and others providers generate income from this. They charge fee from companies, which want to post a link or advertisement on these websites. They can collect this information and provide in form of statistic data and sell it to research companies that want to use this kind of information.
Q1. The classic problem that always faced in the Internet is a hacker. Whenever there is new technology which was issued on the Internet, hackers are always trying to make a mess. In this case, as we know together, the cost of treatment/medical is very expensive and if the hacker can access to network will occur forgery or manipulation of data. Hackers could alter the original recommendation of doctors become fake doctors, so they can get a lot of money from these fraudulent practices results.
Q.2 Firstly, it is very easy to find the target market, because most of people really care about their health. Secondly, if somebody felt satisfied about the health service, the patients can give recommend to other people to use health service (viral advertising/mouth to mouth). Thirdly, the providers can change people behaviour to use on line health service rather than going to hospital or clinic. This means make people feel comfortable, easy and do not have spending time on the way.
Q3. Google and Microsoft would have income from these services because they hold information and patients medical report. the patients should have pay a lot of money for this service. another income for Google and Microsoft are they take commision from doctors or clinics that they recommend.
Q1. It is critical to protect medical information from tampering or snooping from insurance companies or employers out to reduce liabilities.
It is critical to have external proof technology companies working with medical records are doing what they say they do.
No Google Health users should expect to find their health information as search results on Google.
Q2. They has links to pharmacies, Clinics and diagnostic labs, and they can gather people’s information, as users the service can set up a relationship with hospital. Therefore they can target market much easier than before.
Q3. Google and Microsoft will make money because they have information about patient. As they have information about patient, many other insurance company want to advertise in their website, so they can earn money.
Q1. I think that even though this online medical history could be very useful mostly for frequent travellers, there are very delicate aspects that must be taking under control. First of all, i think is too much personal information together to be put on just one place. If this information is taken for a person with the wrong purposes, it will be a high level of security breach and the people just need one example of security breach to lose their trust on this system. Secondly, the people who are after this information will do every think to get it, so the risk would be higher. Finally if for any reason, any medical information provided is inaccurate, the aim of saving a life could end up in a tragic death.
Q2. They can use the web page, as e-marketing for medical products, medical insurance and medical investigations. This mean that every company which provide health services or medical products want to know the information of people, that help them to reach other targets that they are might not considering.
Q3. Definitely Google and Microsoft, because they have the power of this information. They might not be able to give personal information from people, but they can give other sort of general information that they are interested about. This information could be the needs and the wants of the people, the product preferences and even the most common plastics surgeries the people get, and from which countries, what ages and gender.
Q1. Microsoft Health Vault uses a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, and disclosure. On the other hand, Google Health uses software, hardware, and strict policies to keep your health information safe and private.
Q2. It should grow in the future. The number of people who are interested in these services could be increase. These services are easy and convenient because they have done via the internet. Also, they can help people to save much time instead going to outside to meet the doctor directly.
Q3. Good Health and Microsoft Health Vault. They may make money from any companies which would like to advertise anything that are related with patients on these websites, for example, insurance company.
Post a Comment