First Google Health Screenshots Released
Philipp at Blogoscoped has the first major screenshot collection of Google Health, the Google service we’ve been hearing about forever but seen nothing about. Head over there to get a look at the service, which helps you:
- Organize your medical information by:
- Track your medications
- Search up conditions and symptoms (with auto-suggest to help you out)
- Find pharmacy records
- Find doctors
- Track your allergies
- Track your surgeries and procedures
- Track medical tests
- Track immunizations
- Create a profile with your age, sex, height, ethnicity, blood type, weight, smoking and drinking habits
- Enter your family history of diseases and conditions
- Enter your doctors and other medical contacts
Google Health needs to provide all this information to users, while keeping an interface that is easy enough for older users to take advantage of. The biggest consumers of medical information and services are the elderly, and that’s also the group Google can crack to expand its reach into an entirely ignored demographic. Hopefully the interface will have the necessary ease-of-use to reach this incredibly tough to appeal to group.
Jordan McCollum says that Microsoft is working on a product in this area, too, and Ask has launched some smart answers aimed at medical searches. Everyone wants to be the first to be really successful in this area, so expect a war eventually.
Wow. Just wow. It almost sounds like a joke.
And think of how useful this data is going to be to Google. “We know you’ve been a long-time smoker, would you like to upgrade your health insurance?”, “You live in an area where mesothelioma tumors are common. Please do check out our sponsored links!”
Or perhaps they just want to anticipate your Google queries. “You are a 18 year old male, we suggest the following searches based on popularity among your peers… (Now take a wild guess as to what the queries would be.)
Okay, I may be making fun of it, but I don’t oppose Google Health per se. I’m just not planning on ever using it.
Comment by Tim | August 16, 2007