Michael McBride writes in redOrbit:
On Feb. 28th, at the 2008 annual HIMSS conference, Google announced its first product for healthcare – Google Health – a new personal health record (PHR) that will be free to use and available just about anywhere in the United States. To say that the news was received positively does not adequately describe the response. Hours before Google’s press conference, several EMR/Practice Management software vendors had already announced agreements to interface their technology with Google Health, which created a stir that became fervor and, ultimately, the talk of the show. Since then, more companies have announced agreements with Google, even though the results of the pilot haven’t even been announced. No other PHR release garnered this much attention from both sides of the industry.
Why does Google Health have the industry all a-twitter? Because, it’s the Internet, and if ever there was an invention that appealed to the majority of people, this is it. Studies repeatedly show that the portion of the population using the Internet to research medical conditions and medications is growing rapidly and shows no indication of slowing down.
Full article – redOrbit