Today’s joint IBM – Google announcement about enabling personal health monitoring devices to send data directly to Google Health gave me the grand opportunity for a (not-so) quick rant that’s been boiling in me for a while. 

Ever since I started actively managing my parents’ health care I’ve been a heavy user of electronic health records and communication systems, and I am immensely frustrated.  Frustrated at the paper-based world we’re facing in the 21st century, but also at the current attempts to change all that.  Grand ideas, alliances, announcements, but they all feel like IT-talk, losing sight of the very people these systems supposed to serve: patients.  That’s you and me and our relatives who have health issues.  

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Tags: Google, google health, health, health 2.0, health care, health records, healthvault, hipaa, microsoft, privacy, usability, windows live