New York — The ubiquitous tech powerhouses have inked a partnership deal to develop a service that empowrs people who use Google Health to automatically stream data from medical devices — such as those used to monitor glucose levels and blood pressure — into their personal online health records.
The new feature, developed in partnership with Continua Health Alliance, an organization that provides interoperable health care technology products. It collects data from personal health examining devices, like blood sugar meters for diabetics, and share that directly with the patient in question’s Google Health file (and the patient’s physician, if he or she uses Google Health as well).
The concept is based in part on open-source software available now from Eclipse and Open Health Tools, two open-source communities dedicated to supporting advancements in health care. Hence, other personal health record (PHR) services will also be able to use the IBM software as well.
Google said, for instance, a busy mother can avail daily electronic updates on the health status of an aging parent who lives alone, or a person who is diabetic and training for a marathon can have a real-time discussion about blood sugar levels and heart rate with a coach hundreds of miles away.
“Our partnership with IBM will help both providers and users gain access to their device data in a highly simplified and automated style,” Google Health director Sameer Samat said in a release. “IBM has taken an important step in providing software that enables device manufacturers and hospitals to easily upload recorded data into a PHR platform, such as Google Health.”
Sean Hogan, IBM’s vice president of Healthcare Delivery Systems, said the new software has been conceptualized to offer convenience and help people safely manage their health data — “whether it is alerting a family member, a mom checking her weight or a business traveler who wants to better manage his own fitness.”
IBM said the system will help to ensure that patient’s health records are up to date at all times.
“By tapping the increasingly growing use of remote patient monitoring across every part of the health care services industry, our new IBM solution enormously increases the real-time value of [personal health records] for consumers everywhere,” said Dan Pelino, general manager for IBM’s Healthcare & Life Sciences unit, in a statement Wednesday.
IBM will supply the software and Google will contribute the online storage component in a partnership aimed at allowing patients to track their own vital signs and share them with their doctors. No hardware partners have been announced, but the move signals an advance in the march toward electronic personal health records.
“With close to a quarter of the world’s population overweight, more than 600 million people with some form of chronic disease, and millions more reaching retirement age, the time for greater personal health management is now,” said Continua Health Alliance president Dave Whitlinger, in a statement.
Google Health, which launched last May, enable users to store, manage, and share their health records in a secure, online environment, is available for free to users at http://www.google.com/health.
It is part of an increasing effort to get consumers to put their personal health information online. Google Health’s main competitor is Microsoft Corp.’s HealthVault, which is also free.
E-health technologies is believed to receive a boost under the Obama administration. The president wants all Americans’ health care records and related information digitized within five years. The aim is that such an effort will lower costs and create efficiencies by eliminating paperwork, facilitating on-demand patient information for the full spectrum of providers, and making fraud easier to spot.