In October 2007, Microsoft announced their entry into the health care arena with the launch of HealthVault — a web-based application to “…collect, store, and share the health information critical to your family’s well-being.” Basically, an online medical/ health record system.

Not to be outdone by the folks in Redmond, Google is now preparing to launch a web-based “personal health records” system associated with your Google account. Here’s the semi-official word from a Google Blog post (by a Google engineer, nonetheless). And here are some excerpts from the NY Times article:

The pilot project…will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google’s new service, which won’t be open to the general public.

Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that’s also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools.

Google views its expansion into health records management as a logical extension because its search engine already processes millions of requests from people trying to find about more information about an injury, illness or recommended treatment…

The clinic already keeps the personal health records of more than 120,000 patients on its own online service called MyChart. Patients who transfer the information to Google would still be able to get the data quickly even if they were no longer being treated by the Cleveland Clinic…

The Cleveland Clinic decided to work with Google ”to create a more efficient and effective national health care system,” said C. Martin Harris, the medical center’s chief information officer…

It’s not clear how Google intends to make money from its health service. The company sometimes introduces new products without ads just to give people more reason to visit its Web site, betting the increased traffic will boost its profits in the long run.

According to The Health Care Blog, CEO Eric Schmidt will officially launch the Google Health Records system at the upcoming HIMSS conference.

Although there is plenty of concern about privacy issues surrounding even more personal data being stored by the search giant, I think it is definitely a step in the right direction for both Google and the Health Care industry.

For one thing, the medical and health care industries (including pharma) are just SOOOO far behind when it comes to adopting technology, that it’s actually nice to see the reverse for a change (i.e. tech industry “adopting” health care).

And for another thing, my limited knowledge of eHealth and eMedical Records (EHR/ EMR) leads me to believe that there is no real standardized platform that they operate on and therefore it is difficult to transfer information/records from one system to another (which kinda defeats the purpose, no?).

Having attended quite a number of medical conferences over the last few years, it seems like the number of booths being occupied by different third-party EHR/EMR companies just keeps growing and growing (probably each with their own proprietary system, too).

So, with tech giants like Google and Microsoft on board, we may be one step closer to defining a universal standard whereby our health records can be shared between different systems and different medical institutions.

Furthermore, with a web-based application, there’s no need to buy expensive licenses or install proprietary software that needs to be constantly updated and that is probably less elegantly designed than most Web 2.0-ish web apps. Instead, any device that can access the Internet can access these records as well.

Who knows? Maybe some day soon you’ll be accessing your medical records through an app on your iPhone!?! Or perhaps it may even be integrated into Google’s new mobile operating system, Android? I’m certainly looking forward to what the future holds…