Google Health, IBM: real-time, vital medical data stream
Posted by attilachordash on February 5, 2009
Forbes article: Letting Google Take Your Pulse via @mattcutts:
On Thursday, Google and IBM will unveil a new initiative that will allow Google Health, a site where users can store and track information about their medical history, to connect to and stream data from medical devices. In demonstrations, IBM and Google fitted Wi-Fi radios to gadgets like heart rate monitors, blood pressure cuffs, scales and blood-sugar measurement meters, allowing the devices to communicate with a PC and feed real-time medical information directly into Google’s online records.
Hooking up those devices to the Web, IBM argues, will offer a new immediacy and granularity of health monitoring. A user can remotely track the blood pressure readings or glucose levels of a diabetic parent living alone, or stream his or her medical information like weight or heart rate directly to a doctor or physical trainer.
“If there’s something abnormal, you can catch it before you have an episodic intervention, like going to the emergency room,” says Dan Pelino, manager of IBM’s health care division. “This is like OnStar for a patient, keeping constant information about you and sending alerts even before you have a problem.”
More on Google Health on Pimm:
Meet Dr. Google Health: Roni Zeiger, right from Stanford!
Google Factory Tour of Health: watch the pivotal moment!
FriendFeed comments: The hidden backyard
Late Google Health: catching up with the past, first!
A bit of history: The official launch of Google Health, 19/05/08
Aaron Rowe said
That will be very important, if it is well planned. Hopefully, everyone will jump onto the IBM standard without much bickering. It will be a particularly great feature for point of care devices. Every patient should have an identifier number that gets barcoded onto their blood vials and biopsy samples before the head off to the lab.
ezDigg said
Thank for sharing