Google says it's shutting down the projects because they got very little traction but health industry tech innovators say that Google Health may have been ahead of its time, did a poor job reaching out to a now growing ecosystem of developers and ought to be put on slow life support or open sourced instead of being shut down. When it comes to patient-centric cloud-based electronic health records, the opportunity remains large, the need severe but the challenges are substantial.

What it Means to Lose Google Health

Medical information heavy-hitter John D. Halamka MD says Google Health was a real trailblazer in its time. Dr. Halamka is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the CIO and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School, the Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), CEO of MA-SHARE (the Regional Health Information Organization), Chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) and a practicing Emergency Physician.

"Google Health is truly innovative and broke new ground when it created interfaces to hospitals, labs, and pharmacies in 2008," Halamka wrote today on his blog. "I was there at the beginning and can definitively state that it was Google's reputation and vision that broke down the political barriers keeping data from patients...Google Health [still] has the best user interface, feature set, and ease of use of all the stand alone personal health records." (It should be noted that Israel Deaconess Medical, one of Dr. Halamka's employers, was one of Google Health's launch partners.)

Halamka says Google Health "really moved the industry" but other observers express disappointment that the project barely got out of the starting gate.

"It will take someone the size of Google and not in the health space to create something that's more standardized in the health space, where everything is so proprietary and money driven," says Shwen Gwee, founder of the blog Med 2.0.

"Unfortunately, it's always been Google's philosophy to fail fast and cut off the arm that isn't doing any work. Early adopters were interested in using Google Health, but it took too long to move. I wonder what would happen if they launched it now, with everything that's coming out around open and standardized data. I wish they would donate the platform, open source it, issue a challenge or something, and see what others could do with it."

The request that the Google Health platform be open sourced is something we heard from multiple industry players. People feel burned by the loss of a big opportunity due to the impatience of a big, slow company.

"Google is cutting and running too early from Google Health..in the long term I believe this to be a big mistake," says Mark Scrimshire, co-founder of the HealthCamp Foundation, an organization that puts on events around the world to hack on the future of healthcare.

"Health was always a long term play. An industry mired in regulation and conservative approaches, things were never going to change quickly. However, momentum is building. We are [now] seeing a tremendous uptick in innovations that make use of Government Health Data [for example].

"Personally, I still use Google Health on a daily basis. My Fitbit and numerous other health related data sources feed in to Google Health and pass data out to other services like Keas.com [a workplace wellness program]. I recently moved my Pharmacy because I could have my data automatically piped in to Google Health.

Right: HealthCamp's Mr. Scrimshire, before and after using Google Health.

"Google Health - what we call an untethered Personal Health Record - was NOT a destination in and of itself. Instead it was more useful as a conduit through which we could channel our health data.

"As Meaningful Use requirements kick in as a result of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act we can expect to see Patient Portals popping up like daisies and consequently a growing need to provide a place that Patients can bring together all these disparate data sources in order to get a comprehensive view of their Health. It is not happening yet, but expect to see changes happening in 2012 and people starting to look for solutions to help them get their arms around their health data. The problem for Google will be that by cutting and running now who will trust them in the future if they decide to come back to the table?"

A spokesperson for Google declined an offer to respond to any of the issues raised in this article prior to publication, saying the company preferred that its announcement today speak for itself.

Why Did Google Health Fail to Gain More Traction?

There are many different theories about why Google Health didn't grow faster.

"As much as there's a massive consumer-empowerment movement, in order to get ongoing and broad adoption of something in healthcare, one needs to lead with the clinicians. Take a look at ZocDoc, for example. They are having success with appointment scheduling by leading with doctors/dentists who then, in turn, bring in their patients. Without provider adoption first, they would have had limited success with consumers."

Matthew Holt, Co-Chair of the organization the Health 2.0 Network says he thinks insurance companies were in part to blame. "Google became disappointed when they found out how hard it was to get Insurance agencies to share their data voluntarily," Holt says. "They made some progress but not enough."

The most common critique we heard though was of Google Health's work with tech developers.

Healthcare blogger Faisal Qureshi said on Twitter this afternoon, "Google Health failed at not reaching out to vertical developers, Android fixation & not learning how MSFT partners."

Brian Ahier, a hospital IT evangelist in Oregon echos that sentiment:

"While Microsoft has assembled a list of companies that make products (glucometers, blood pressure monitors, etc.) and offered software that pulls in data from hospitals and labs, compatible with their HealthVault product, Google has made little to no headway in this area.

"I remember a few years back Google did fairly well when compared to Microsoft but HealthVault has continued to mature and Google has been stalled for some time."

Ahier says that Google's decision to pull the plug on Google Health will ultimately be a bad thing for the whole industry.

We spoke to a number of people who agreed that Google launched a stronger health data product than Microsoft, but that Microsoft's HealthVault has since surpassed Google Health.

"The problem with Google Health is that it offers no incentive to use it, it positioned itself as a data repository and not much else," says Brian Dolan, Editor of MobileHealthNews. "Some of the other consumer apps and devices are filling the gaps and they have their own back end systems and APIs, they're all sharing with each other. These other sticky consumer health apps are driving uptake and driving adoptions."

One of those startups and a platform in-and-of itself is Boston-based fitness tracking service Runkeeper. Founder Jason Jacobs says of Google Health's closure,

"Sensors are starting to proliferate across categories, but someone still needs to tie this data together and provide the users a holistic view. Google's vision for data aggregation and the good that can come from it was right, but data aggregation isn't the only piece, the consumer-facing system that people love has to be there. And that is the hardest part.

"Google was a pioneer in many ways with Google Health, and helped turn people on to the need to solve the problem of health data fragmentation. While they may not have achieved the consumer adoption they were hoping for, someone is going to crack the consumer nut in health in a Facebook-like way, and the world will be better off for it."

Or, as RunKeeper's @HealthGraphAPI Twitter account said upon learning the news, "Don't worry folks, we'll take it from here..."

Surely someone will take it from here, right?

The huge stores of knowledge about our lives and world now contained on the servers of huge companies like Google and Facebook could be put to great use - or they could end up providing the foundation for a sci-fi horror story. Chances are, reality will be somewhere in between. All this centralized information about us will be useful, a little invasive and a little disappointing in the utility actually delivered. When the worst-case scenario story gets written, though, it's hard to imagine this won't be a chapter.

That sounds great. For example, we wrote this Spring about a related, independent service that provides this type of functionality called Legacy Locker. That company's security measures look great, and they aren't Google. Which would you prefer to entrust with your dying wishes? It's something to think about.

Just remember that for a growing number of people, Google now knows about our search histories, our email behavior, our telephone activity, our genetic codes, what the front of our homes look like...and now how we want to be treated when we're dying. It's all very useful. I'm just saying.

If you think that "data portability" and standards for an open web hold a lot of promise to fuel innovation in social networking, just imagine what a secure, standards-based, data landscape could enable in health care.

The Continua Alliance, made up of companies like Nokia, Intel and Panasonic, along with IBM and Google, highlighted a handful of factors in the announcement. The technology will be useful in a wide variety of case types ("including chronic disease management, health and wellness, and elderly care"), in the US and around the world. By leveraging online services, the platform will enable healthcare providers to leverage scale in ways that otherwise isolated medical monitoring can not. And by putting the software into widespread use, the group hopes to make significant headway in supporting open standards and "interoperable healthcare products and solutions." That's on top of all the standard consumer benefits of online health records. (See coverage at Medgadget for more details and a link to the press release.) The companies don't yet have any name for the platform but say it's tested and ready to deploy.

The group also said that supporting the development of Google Health was one of its goals, but we hope that the technology will support the development of an entire ecosystem of complimentary, competing and interoperable health data services.

That kind of language is both similar to what advocates of social networking "data portability" use and represents the kind of steps we'd love to see more of from big vendors in all kinds of technology sectors.

Open, standardized data, backed up by certified security measures and serving as the foundation of a new era of innovation is a fantastic vision. If you think that big players in social networking have a financial interest in data lock-in, though, just imagine the resistance that "data portability" could face in the multi-trillion dollar medical industry.

The companies collaborating on this platform believe that consumer demand for informed care, combined with the vendor participation already gathered, will force the rest of the industry to open, down to every medical practitioner challenged by patients to use portable data in treatment. That seems like a sound strategy to us.

"Twelve months ago," Jane Sarasohn-Kahn said, "the most important things on American voters' minds were the war and health care. Two days ago, the most important thing on American voters' minds is the economy. Health care and the war have taken a backseat."

This doesn't mean however, that health care plays second fiddle to the attendees of the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this week - it's still their driving force. The rules of engagement however, as Clay Shirky pointed out in his keynote on Wednesday, are changing.

Additionally, the financial meltdown is aggravating an already weak health system as people forgo or postpone essential health care due to loss of insurance or inability to pay.

The answer, according to the survey, is engagement: "Effective health engagement can build trust, and conversely, trust is the key to deeper engagement," said Nancy Turett (Edelman).

While the Edelman study serves as a basic guide, the leading providers of health information services have also been monitoring and implementing changes.

WebMD and Aetna

Wayne Gattinella (CEO WebMD), pointed out that health on the Web is no longer only for the electronic literate, a fact that demonstrates the power of electronic information. "Additionally, health care is not only about personal issues anymore," he said, "but financial as well. Patients want to know how to reduce out-of-pocket costs; they want more information."

Mark Bertolini (President, Aetna), said the company is hoping to help customers improve communications with their health insurance providers by giving them the option to transfer their personal health records to Microsoft's HealthVault - "our main focus is on portability," he said.

The Big (Internet) 3 - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo

Of course, the big three - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo - have plans of their own.

Microsoft, according to Peter Neupert (Corporate VP, Microsoft HSG) is focused on making HealthVault, a platform that allows providers to look at patient information [with their consent], easier to use for physicians and consumers.

Roni Zeiger, (Product Manager, Google Health) told the audience that the most important thing they've been hearing is "we want our data," since the launch of Google Health, a site that allows people to store health information. "This is incredibly hard," he explained, "people want data, but they also want two more things: it must be easy, and it must be useful."

Michael Yang (VP & GM Yahoo! Health), said that the biggest changes in the past year are awareness and recognition: "It's amazing to see how much demand there is for health."

While these five companies are paving the way to make personal health records available on the Web, the question remains whether we as a society can get used to the idea.

What do you think?

Integrate Your Stuff Here

Krasner cited MyCareTeam, a third party diabetes management application which she says is using Google Health to "to integrate their stuff into our repository for health records."

According to the press release in May about this integration, the MyCareTeam product allows users to transfer their glucose readings, lab values, medication, and other information from their software into their Google Health accounts. It is mostly a manual process, however Krasner pointed out that users can upload their data "automatically using LifeScan OneTouch meters". She admitted though that Google is "still in the very early stages, so these services are still growing and developing."

Online Health Constraints

The issue with moving health records online though is that there is a lot of rules and regulations to contend with. However Tenderich asked Krasner why Google isn't doing more, for example by offering a secure messaging system to allow patients to discuss their health issues with their doctors. Krasner's reply shows how this is too much of a red tape jungle for even the mighty Google to overcome:

"This goes back to the health records platform model. We're not in the business of offering secure messaging back and forth with doctors. What we're doing is giving people options to use great services that do offer that functionality.

For example, we integrate with web sites from the big retail pharmacy chains and provider sites like CVS, Walgreens and Quest Diagnostics labs. You can't order refills directly through Google Health, but you can import your prescription history, and you can send data back to the pharmacies via their sites."

So users have to leave the Google Health site when they need to make a medical transaction or even communicate securely with health professionals.

Business Model? Pffft, Search!

Luckily, Google Health's business model isn't reliant on any sophisticated online health technology. What is the business model? Why, sending Google Health users to Google's search property of course!

Kraser admitted that "there is no direct monetization model for Google Health", rather their model "is simply that when people sign up, it tends to encourage users to do more searches on Google.com. That's where we make our money. Every page of Google Health has [a] search box on the side. If you click on it, it takes you out to Google.com."

But "none of your health data goes with [it]", she assured.

So it's slow progress in the online health world, if Google Health is anything to go by. The good news though is that it allows smaller more health-focused startups, like MyCareTeam, to create innovative applications and hook them into Google Health, Microsoft Healthvault, and other bigco initiatives - using APIs and the platforms the big companies are able to offer.

Click here for a good cause: Ask Google for a World Diabetes Day Doodle

The business model is largely serving ads, which allows the product to be free - although users can pay $250 $100 per month for an ad-free version. The company has just announced it has signed up 1,300 medical professionals since launch in November of 2007 and is currently serving "more than a quarter million patients."

Privacy Pain Point?

Apart from the ads, Practice Fusion also makes money by selling anonymized patient and doctor data from its system to third parties. Before the privacy advocates among us have heart attacks, the company says that it in both business models, it maintains strict privacy standards - in particular HIPAA compliance (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). In a recent New York Times article, Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard stated that their system doesn't collect "the names or other personally identifiable information of patients".

Flex-ible

In terms of the technical side of Practice Fusion, Adobe evangelist and all-round RIA expert Ryan Stewart looked into it back in March. After noting that it uses Adobe's Flex in the user interface, Ryan pointed out that historically EMR software has been expensive and painful:

"...there are huge costs associated with adding an EMR system. The major players; Misys and Nextgen cost a ton of money and manpower to implement. Practice Fusion on the other hand, is free, browser-based and has a relatively low barrier to entry."

In a separate post, ZDNet's Dan Farber also mentioned Cerner, Epic Systems and IDX as examples of old-school competitors that cost tens of thousands of dollars per seat.

Ease of use is to the fore in Practice Fusion's promotion materials; the company claims that users will be up and running in just 5 minutes ("live in five"). There's not much argument from us that a low-cost, streamlined browser service like Practice Fusion has a lot of potential. Although it will face the same issues that Google Apps has in the office software market - security, scalability, whether it's appropriate to host sensitive data in the cloud, and so on. Practice Fusion is targting small physician practices, which indicates that there's a long way to go before its solution will be viable for larger organisations, such as hospitals.

Click for larger screenshot

For more details about the Practice Fusion product, check out this article on healthcare epistemocrat.

Don't Call Them Consumers!

One of the interesting differences between how Practice Fusion is marketing its product and how Google is marketing Google Health, is in how they view the 'users'. Google CEO Eric Schmidt raised the ire of Practice Fusion's management in a recent speech at HIMMS. Advisory board member Graham Walker scolded Dr Schmidt in a blog post:

"Please stop calling patients consumers. Patients are people with illnesses or injuries who need medical care; consumers are people who purchase goods or services and are informed about what they're purchasing. (Most patients are not actively dictating what health care resources they're consuming.) Note: there are certainly consumers of health information, but a person who comes to me seeking medical attention is not a consumer. He or she is a patient."

Walker also claims that "the medical record is not the patient's property." He thinks that the model to use for the medical record in the Web era is 'shared control' - i.e. "the patient controls who sees the information in their medical record, but the patient's physician controls the actual information."

Conclusion

It does appear that Practice Fusion is a physician-centered tool, whereas Google Health and the other bigco services are consumer-centered - sorry, patient-centered. So I'm not sure it's accurate to portray Practice Fusion as a competitor to Google Health. Regular people can't even use Practice Fusion, it's a product for doctors and their staff.

It's good to see that a simple, web-based office management service is ramping up well in the health sector. But it's early days yet and the product hasn't made a splash in big markets.

Next Gen Apps Won't Be Pushed Around By the Browser

The invention of the browser was a huge boon to the internet and a substantial amount of computing now goes on through that interface we've grown to love. The internet is not a place where innovation takes a break, though, and a new generation of applications are emerging that have a different relationship with the web browser.

From taking control of the browser to connecting to the web outside of it, there are a number of new strategies being implemented by startups these days. In the following post we discuss seven different ways that new apps are telling browsers "you 'aint the boss of me now!" Some you'll be familiar with, but some you may not be.

Wikis Are Now Serious Business

Only a handful of years ago, it was common to hear people laugh at Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it! How could you take it seriously? These days, just as blogs are, wikis are on their way to winning a reputation as serious publishing platforms.

Free hosted wiki provider Wetpaint announced last night that it's now raised a total of $40 million in venture capital. To celebrate this major financial validation of the wiki world, we thought we'd offer a brief survey of some of the most interesting ways that wikis are being put to serious use today.

How to Make Facebook Useful Again

Oh the heels of some of Facebook's missteps (ahem, Beacon) and the proliferation of a myriad of useless, silly, and time-wasting apps, some former Facebook users decided to quit the site for good this year. However, a handful of early adopter angst doesn't have Facebook worried. Why is that? Because Facebook has a whole generation of users who grew up using their site for everything social back when it was just a way to network with their high school or college friends. So what are the everyday Facebook users doing that keeps them engaged in the service? It's not throwing sheep, apparently. For many Facebook users, there are still useful apps to be found and ways to use the service that the rest of us could learn from.

See also: Why There Should Be Web Search on Facebook and Facebook Censoring User Messaging: Spam Prevention or Unaccountable Control of Conversation?

Google Health Launches - Cautious, Non-Innovative Entry into Health 2.0

This week Google announced the public availability of Google Health, after initially launching as a closed beta back in February. It is described as "a safe and secure way to collect, store, and manage [your] medical records and health information online" and is being positioned as a way for users to control their own medical records.

Google Health is a decent entry into the game-changing (and potentially hugely profitable) world of health 2.0. But in comparison with other health startups, Google Health has a limited scope and is not as innovative a service as we've come to expect from Google...

The Future of Mobile Social Networks: 4 Promising Services

Recently we discussed some of the problems plaguing mobile social networks. These problems include location, marketing strategies and compatibility issues. Our readers also contributed their thoughts on hardware compatibility and GPS. While no network is perfect, in this post we profile some of the key players in the market. Here's a look at four mobile social networks that may have what it takes.

SEE MORE WEB APPS COVERAGE IN OUR WEB APPS CATEGORY

Web Trends

Report: The Mobile Web is the New Hangout

According to Opera's survey of the more 11.9 million Opera Mini users in March, almost 41% of mobile traffic now goes to social networking -- up to 60% in some countries, including the US. Compare that to about 6% of total web traffic for social networks outside of the mobile web. That's not overly surprising, though, given the recent proliferation of new smartphones aimed at consumers (or at least phones that can view the full web), made ultra-chic over the past year by Apple's iPhone. Says Opera, 3/4ths of mobile web traffic is now to the full web, rather than WAP or .mobi sites, which are quickly becoming out-moded.

See Also: To Beat Google, Beat Google to the Mobile Web

Do you use the mobile web? Remember to vote in our poll below.

Social Media U: Take a Class in Social Media

Social media. Web 2.0. You know what these things are and you take advantage of them every day on the net. Whether you're socializing on Facebook, updating Twitter, or just adding a new bookmark to Ma.gnolia, social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. However, that doesn't mean that it's something that everyone innately understands or knows how to use - especially when it comes to using it for marketing, PR, or other business-related purposes. That's why many of today's colleges and universities are now offering "social media" classes as an option for their students.

How to Use Social Media for Social Change

Did you participate in the Twit-Out this week? Do you even know what that is? To get you up to speed, a handful of Twitter users, fed up with the regular outages of their favorite service, decided to band together to show Twitter some tough love by boycotting the service for a day. (Unfortunately, despite having fewer users on the service, Twitter still went down). However, in light of recent world events, it's a shame that the cause the tech community has chosen to rally around is that of Twitter's instability. Aren't there more important things going on right now?

The URL Is Dead, Long Live Search

Last week Josh Catone was watching TV and saw something that really caught his eye. It was a commercial for Special K, the breakfast cereal from Kellogg, and rather than end with a plug for the product's web site -- SpecialK.com -- it advised people to search Yahoo! for "Special K" instead. He started to wonder two things: 1. is Yahoo! paying Special K for tack-on advertising? and 2. has searching really become so natural that it is more effective to tell people to search for your site than it is to tell them to visit directly?

SemTech Panel: Taking Semantic Technology to the Masses

How will the Semantic Web make the jump to the mainstream? That was the topic of a panel at the SemTech 2008 Conference that happened this week in San Jose. The panel was moderated by Carla Thomson from Guidewire Group and featured Josh Dilworth from Porter Novelli, Tom Tague, who heads the Calais initiative at Reuters, and Mark Johnson, who is a product manager at Powerset. This post is based on notes from that panel.

See also: SemTech Panel: Investor Opportunities and Pitfalls

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Google Health is a decent entry into the game-changing (and potentially hugely profitable) world of health 2.0. But in comparison with other health startups, Google Health has a limited scope and is not as innovative a service as we've come to expect from Google...

Limitations

As of now Google Health is limited to english language and is available in the US only. So there isn't a lot to be gained for those of us outside the US uploading our medical records into Google Health. Perhaps we are better off using a truly global service, such as Australian startup MiVitals (our coverage). Although Google will over time open up Google Health to the rest of the world.

Google Health is limited in many other ways, chief among them is that users need to import their own data into the service - there is little in the way of automatic data entry from your health providers. This was a key issue we found with MiVitals too. As we've noted before, when it comes to health data there are a couple of key issues to overcome:

1) Ensuring that the data is ultra secure and that all privacy bases are covered; and

2) Getting healthcare professionals to use the system.

On the first issue, Google appears to have pretty strong privacy policies - indeed before you can even access the site you need to approve a fairly long Terms of Service page. For example Google is very careful to position this as an informational service, rather than a diagnostic one:

"Google Health does not offer medical advice. Any content accessed through Google Health is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to cover all possible uses, directions, precautions, drug interactions, or adverse effects."

However they still need to convince consumers that their data is truly safe on the Web - which with very personal data like health, is a tough ask. Even I'm not fully comfortable storing my health data online yet.

As we mentioned with MiVitals, the second issue is probably the biggest - and will require integration with existing healthcare IT systems. Google has made a start with the few partners it announced (limited to parts of the US).

Some of Google's initial health partners

However integration is a huge obstacle and one that many startups have tried to solve before, including in the original 'dot com' era. One was Jim Clark's famous Healtheon startup - as outlined in Michael Lewis' must-read dot com book The New New Thing, Clark (the co-founder of Netscape and one of Silicon Valley's enduring folk heroes) set out to revolutionize the healthcare industry in the US via an Internet startup named Healtheon. As the Wikipedia notes, Healtheon "developed software that essentially placed their company between physicians, patients, and health care institutions, eliminating unnecessary paperwork and facilitating networking and communication amongst the three." Although initially unsuccessful, in late 1999 Healtheon merged with the Microsoft-backed WebMD - and today the combined entity is considered the leading health portal.

Conclusion: Google Health Just Scratches the Surface

Google Blogoscoped has a good overview of the new service. But to us, it feels like Google Health is not much more than a glorified health search engine / portal - which to be fair is perhaps the whole point (Google's motto after all is to organize the world's information).

In terms of the market for health apps, it is still a nascent one - but both Google and Microsoft have been positioning themselves well. Microsoft announced their Health Vault initiative last October and in February they acquired Medstory, a vertical search engine for health information. Others in this market include Steve Case's Revolution Health and the current market leader in online health, WebMD. There are also a host of vertical search engines in the health field, including Healia and one of my favorites kosmix.

ReadWriteWeb has been covering health 2.0 for a while now. Check out some of our previous coverage in this fascinating sector of web technology:

• Health 2.0 - Apps & Trends to Watch
• Health Care at SXSW - Health Getting Hot With Tech Crowd
• Top Health 2.0 Web Apps

As we mentioned in the 'Top Health 2.0 Web Apps' post, much of the current crop of health 2.0 apps are based on enhancing communucation, information sharing, and community; rather than tackling the bigger challenges like providing medical diagnosis over the Web. Google Health is a very good example, as it is basically just an information storage service - albeit a handy one because patients will be able to access their records much easier.

But that is slowly changing. Carol.com (a "care marketplace") and Sermo (a community for physicians to exchange information and collaborate) are two examples of new business models that are emerging in healthcare, using the Web (see the Top Health 2.0 Web Apps post for more detail). ZocDoc, which enables you to make doctor and dentist appointments online (currently limited to parts of New York), is another. Online diagnosis will happen too, for example automated online CDSS (Clinical Decision Support Systems).

So Google Health is a good start, alongside Microsoft Health Vault and the many other initiatives by startups and others who have been working on health data apps for some time. But the real action will be in online diagnosis and when web apps are integrated into traditional health systems.

Two such apps to cross our desk lately were 1) CureHunter, which claims to be able to find cures for diseases using semantic technologies; and 2) Go3R, an app that claims to provide information transparency "for the prevention of animal testing".

CureHunter - Can it Really Cure Diseases?

CureHunter is an example of the new semantically-charged health search engines popping up. As the name suggests, it is a web service that aims to find cures for diseases. Judge Schonfeld is the CEO and Chief Scientist of CureHunter and he described it to us in an email as a "Medical Data Mining engine system that uses an intelligent semantic processor linked to a network graph theory module to read the scientific literature (entire NLM archive 1949-2008 >) and compute new cures for human diseases completely autonomously." That's a mouthful, but I've highlighted the key points: it uses semantic processing, network graphs and most interestingly claims to "compute new cures" automatically.

The following graphic (excerpted) illustrates CureHunter's approach. Essentially it tries to analyse health research data and compute cures:

Click here for full image, with extra detail

CureHunter is pretty complex, but I did some tests for diabetes type 1 to see if I could find a "cure". The results were overwhelming, in an 'info overload' kind of way:

It outlined some interesting "cures", but much of the information was not something patients would understand. It seems like a great resource for doctors and physicians though. So to answer the question in the subheader, can CureHunter really cure diseases? Probably only if you're a doctor or physician who knows how to interpret the wealth of data that CureHunter serves up.

Go3R - Prevents or Amplifies Animal Testing?

The idea of having a health database that includes animal testing results isn't something most people would find very appealing. However Go3R, developed in four months by a company from Germany called Transinsight, claims to be a "knowledge-based search engine for alternative methods to animal experiments." (emphasis ours) The site aims to enable scientists to "take advantage of the benefits of semantic searches for the area of alternative methods in accordance with the 3Rs principle [Replacement, Reduction and Refinement]." Transinsight is already known in the web 2.0 world for GoPubMed, a health search engine that AltSearchEngines has covered before.

You could view Go3R in two ways. The first is the version Transinsight pushes in its press release: that this app makes it easier to find alternatives to animal testing. However the second point of view is that this is a big database that includes animal experiment results, and so it might be seen to amplify the practice of animal testing. For example I searched for "diabetes" and the number 2 result was a test on rats:

Whether you see this as further exploitation of animal testing, or (as Transinsight says) an app that will "lead to a significant reduction of animal experiments", it is an interesting use of semantic technologies(!).

Conclusion

Health search engines are nothing new - indeed both Google and Microsoft have made important announcements in this domain over the past year. In October 2007 Microsoft unveiled HealthVault, a consumer health and search site. In February this year Google announced a pilot program of their health records application called Google Health. A week later, Microsoft acquired Medstory - a vertical search engine for health information. There is also a lot of interest among startups - see our report from the Health 2.0 Conference in March and another report from a healthcare panel at SXSW later that month. Also our network blog AltSearchEngines continuously covers health search engines.

But I'm liking this latest trend for semantically-powered health search engines. If ever there was a compelling need for Semantic Apps to help users make sense of and organize data, it's in health. CureHunter and Go3R are two apps to look out for.

One of the most popular sessions was 'Transforming Hospital Systems: The Digital Future of Healthcare'.

The speakers were Michael Kennedy, an Info systems guy at Microsoft specializing in hospital and insurance systems, and Gregg Lucksinger, Chief Medical Officer of Red River Family Practice and Central Texas Clinical Research. Dr. Lucksinger opened with a case study of how Electronic Medical Records have helped his practice. Helped save time, save money, reduce mistakes, etc. It's not too hard of a case to make in theory. Your bank uses electronic records to streamline your banking, why should your doctors have to mail each other libraries of paper files? Of course the devil is in the details, particularly those involving implementation.

SXSW health care session

Michael Kennedy noted that Microsoft is getting into health care big time. According to Kennedy, Microsoft's health care staff now tops 600 full time employees. Much of the work focuses on tying electronic medical records to hospital systems. Not surprisingly, most of the growth is in foreign markets where things don't need to be "retro-fitted" to engage "legacy systems", but can be dropped in from scratch.

Microsoft's Healthvault

All of this is old hat in healthcare circles and received limited yawns and polite nods of ascent in the session. Things got interesting when Kennedy described Microsoft's Personal Health Record product, Healthvault.

Basic primer: Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are for doctors and hospitals, insurance companies and employers. They contain things like codes for drugs, tests and procedures - i.e. data. Personal Health Records, on the other hand, are accessible to individual patients. They are a higher level description that people can understand themselves and share with others - i.e. information rather than data. Microsoft's Healthvault places them squarely in the consumer market. It's the plumbing that ties together devices and services meant for individuals. Add to that Google Health, another recent Big Internet Co entry into the same space, and it's easy to see why the session was standing room only and the line for Q&A stretched almost out the door.

Kennedy noted that things were still early, still in roll out mode for both Microsoft and Google, but he mentioned enough current consumer devices and applications to create buzz.

Health 2.0 Devices and Apps

First up, watches from Polar that monitor your heart rate and write the information to your Personal Health Record:

Imagine sharing trends from your workout sessions with your doctor health coach or personal trainer. Same thing with a scale from A&D Medical:

A pedometer from OMRON:

The more traditional medical devices, like blood pressure monitors from OMRON:

A wrist-worn blood pressure unit from Microlife, and a blood glucose meter from Johnson & Johnson's LifeScan:

Okay, so the above are some cool devices. Is anyone making slick apps to sit on top of those devices? Check out the American Heart Association's Blood Pressure Management Center, which gives a slick visualization and makes it easy to see your blood pressure trends over time:

Maybe you're an athlete. How about software from Peaksware? Training Peaks is for the workout junky, while Fitness Peaks is more for the person interested in being generally fit.

Trends

So what does all of this mean? Firstly, these devices and apps help people become experts in their health and well-being. Individuals gather their data - blood pressure, glucose, heart rate, weight, workout session and nutritional information, etc - then use the apps to learn about themselves over time.

Second, portability. Tracking your weight, blood pressure and workout info over time isn't new. The problem was that every product lived in its own silo. The offerings from Microsoft and Google break down these walled gardens, creating rich data assets for personal lifelong care, from their interaction with a given product.

Perhaps more importantly, granting people a 360 degree view of themselves - how does taking a walk affect your own blood pressure and glucose?

Finally, personal responsibility. Health care is about behavior change - about people taking control of their own health and well-being. Right now everybody has your data but you. Your doctor, your employer and your insurance company have the information and the tools. But that data is lost every time you move, switch doctors, switch jobs or insurance companies. Ironically, the person who has the greatest chance of impacting your health behaviors (you), has virtually no access to information and tools to do so. But the above apps are changing that, creating access and portability that give you the power to take control of your own health and well-being.

Written by Joshua Rosenthal, Ph.D., founder of www.Sprigley.com