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Oh no! Not more Google Health news!
Honest, I am not obsessed with Google. But they just keep poking around at the edges of Health 2.0, so I feel obligated to play along.
Last week, Google announced a new advisory board on health. It consists of a number of MDs and members of the medical "establishment," a few business people (including a Wal-Mart rep), and one or two patient advocates (depending on how you view the Lance Armstrong Foundation).
What purpose will this group serve?
The mission of the Google Health Advisory Council is broadly to help us better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development.
So how has the news of this health advisory council been received so far?
E-patients.net gave Google an A for effort but a D for implementation, noting,
in a very traditional, Big-Company-Hey-Maybe-a
-Little-Evil-Won't-Hurt-Us way, they didn't fill such a council with patients and patient advocates. Instead, they filled it with doctors and doctor insiders . . ., because who better to help Google figure out health than docs?! Gee, I dunno. How about the people who've been the unhappy recipients of such a system for the past 3 or 4 decades?
Several nursing-related sites point out that nary a nurse appears on the list, nor any mental health professionals or medical librarians. Others point out that there is no pharma representation either.
One area that is represented is the Open Access movement. As a related blog enthused,
Open access to medical research and information ought to be a central concern of the new advisory council. It's too early to say whether OA will make it to the council's agenda, but one reason to think it will is that Sharon Terry is a member. Terry is the President and CEO of the Genetic Alliance and an energetic champion of OA, . . . based on her personal struggle to learn more the genetic disease afflicting her children.
From what I have gleaned from the blogosphere, at least some of the appointees are health IT experts, including the woman from Wal-Mart (one of only five women on the council of 21), who was described this way by one of the unhappy nurses:
Linda M. Dillman, Executive Vice President, Risk Management, Benefits and Sustainability, Wal-Mart
That job title sounds less like someone who can help me with my health concerns and more like someone who can keep me from having enough hours to qualify for my medical coverage. Apparently, she is some sort of IT rockstar. She has a degree in business administration. Frankly I don't know anything about her that I haven't read in the last 10 minutes. I just feel that if there is room for her on this board then there is room for a nurse (or a medical librarian, or a psychologist.)
and this mention of
John D. Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, [who] is a longtime and prominent advocate of increased use of IT in the delivery of health care
At least one IT-related health blog expressed enthusiasm. FierceHealthIT referred to the panel as "stellar," and observed that because the members are not receiving much in the way of compensation (only an honorarium, no stocks), they must
share many other observers' view that whatever Google develops, it will be important to the industry--and you can't beat a front-row seat on that kind of thing.
Certainly Google Health has captured our imagination. But I think the make-up of this advisory council could have been more imaginative.