First Google Health Screenshots

From Phillip Lenssen

Google Health, codename “Weaver”, is Google’s planned health information storage program. Google’s Vice President of Engineering Adam Bosworth lobbies for the program for quite a while now. Adam said the current US health care system is challenged when it comes to “supporting caregivers and communicating between different medical organizations.” Adam went on to say that people “need the medical information that is out there and available to be organized and made accessible to all ... Health information should be easier to access and organize, especially in ways that make it as simple as possible to find the information that is most relevant to a specific patient’s needs.” Adam adds that this – making information accessible – happens to be along Google’s mission.

The New York Times today writes that “about 20 percent of the [US] patient population have computerized records – rather than paper ones – and the Bush administration has pushed the health care industry to speed up the switch to electronic formats. But these records still tend to be controlled by doctors, hospitals or insurers. A patient moves to another state, for example, but the record usually stays.” But, the NYT continues, initiatives like the one by Google “would give much more control to individuals, a trend many health experts see as inevitable.” A prototype of Google Health has now been shown “to health professionals and advisers,” the NYT reports.

To find out just what you might be able to see in a future Google Health service, take a look at these screenshots from Google’s prototype which have been sent in here. As prototypes go, certain approaches of the program may change, and the specific interface may or may not be kept like this in a final release. “We’ll make mistakes and it will be a long-range march,” the NYT quotes Adam Bosworth.

+ imagine social networking plugged into this ...

Hmm. How's the 'Google Heath Service' going to mesh with the National Health Service (NHS)?! Badly, methinks ...

• >> Screenshots

Nicholas Carr posted last year about Google's five 'products', Health is the first sign of the fifth:

So boil it all down, and here is my best guess at what the five Google products will be and how they'll be branded:

• Google Search ("Google" goes back to meaning just search: for all information types, on all devices, personalized)
• AdMarket (a unified market place for buyers and sellers, spanning web text, web video, web banners, print, radio, TV)
• YouTube (YouTube expands from video to become the common interface for all media sharing)
• YouTools (what Apps for Your Domain morphs into, with different tool sets for businesses, families, universities, and hospitals)
• YouFile (a personal information management service, covering health data, finances, etc.)