Pro's Google Medical Records - Essay Example

Medical information has long been stored by doctors, hospitals, clinics and housewives. Doctors, hospitals and clinics have always used the medical charting system, keeping notes in thick files. Medical information was misread, misplaced, faded, and suffered a variety of accidents. Information was shared over telephones and FAX machines, or more often not shared at all. Bits and pieces would perhaps find their ways to a summer camp director, a human resource department, an insurance representative or some other storage destination, where it would become buried and inaccessible to the person whose body was the subject.

Each member of the medical team responsible for the health of a given patient, stored only a limited set of medical information and there was little to no coordination of care (Gassee, 2010). To further complicate the patient’s fractured health picture, given the notoriously illegible handwriting of overly-busy doctors, what information there was in storage was often inaccurately interpreted. Without access, a patient could not take responsibility to correct inaccurate information. Inaccuracies became compounded.

Google’s medical records storage system digitizes all the information and stores it in a central location, online. All members of the medical team, and patient-designated others, have easy access to accurate information, along with the patient (Seidman, 2011). Accuracy is enhanced by patient access to clearly organized records which, like credit card information or educational transcript information, can be corrected when errors are pointed out. Security, a critical issue, is well-assured with Google.

Under the old charting system, the patient could not keep track of who had what personal medical information. There was no way to take information access away from those who had access. Google increases medical information security by linking access invitation, always generated by the patient, to specific e-dresses, keeping access power and access-revocation power under patient control (Gassee, 2010). The patient can always see who has viewed personal medical information. Shared records are read-only (Kincaid, 2009).

Probably the most important policy implemented by Google, with regard to use of their EMR, is that they will not share any information with anybody, without specific user permission to do so (Google Health, 2011). This policy clearly puts the patient, and not Google or “Big Brother”, in charge. Without this policy being in place and assured, those forecasting science fiction nightmares about lack of privacy and loss of self-determination, would have a point. Google is a technological giant.

Such a massive undertaking as this EMR represents, requires human expertise and impressive computer capability. Google has more success in scalability than most other organizations. They have more than 2.5 million servers indexing and storing data daily, so they are experienced with this sort of thing (Gassee, 2010). Furthermore, Google has joined forces with a consortium, to develop a software platform that automatically uploads medical information from home healthcare devices (Kirkpatrick 2009).

They have associated with partner hospitals, pharmacies, etc., to link information, for the convenience of doctors and patients alike (Google Health, 2011). Google’